kcontrol and configure desktop are empty

The problem is with KDE-3 (kdebase3-3.5.7-87.5 etc.) on OpenSuSE-10.3. 
Right click in the desktop background, select "Configure Desktop",
and
you get a window entitled, accurately, "Blank Page".  Execute
kcontrol
and you get just one category tab for "Network", which is empty or
almost empty.  Look in the main menu (lizard icon at left edge of panel
at bottom) in "Favorites" for "Personal Settings"; it isn't
there; and
"settings" in the search box reveals only "Administrator
Settings".
I've run strace on kcontrol and on kdesktop (capturing the
Configure Desktop action), but I was not able to identify a directory
from which the content should have been obtained but was not.  I have
all the packages from kde_basis-10.3-159.i586.pat.gz (the basic pattern
file for installing KDE), and some optional games and utilities.  
"Configure Desktop" and kcontrol work normally on workstations with
OpenSuSE-10.1 and kdebase3-3.5.1-69.66 etc.  There is no obvious
difference in the set of KDE packages installed (beyond omitting beagle
and kdepim3-sync in 10.3, and new packages in 10.3 like
bundle-lang-kde-en and kdelibs3-default-style).  I was not able to get
a useful directory to look at from doing strace on 10.1.  Comparing
files in /opt/kde3 (about 47000 files), there were quite a number
(about 13000) of files in one installation but not the other, but among
those, none named *background* or *configure* were useful; all but one
or two were icons or image files.
The effect is the same on a machine upgraded from 10.1 to 10.3, as
on a brand new machine newly receiving 10.3; on the latter I took
special care to install the SuSE pattern with minimal hacking,
suppressing only a very few packages such as beagle and no packages
that might seem relevant to evaluating a default user experience.
Forum postings suggest that other people can configure their
desktops.  Does anyone have any suggestions where I can look to fix
mine?


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jimc_uclamath
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* jimc uclamath
what happens when you create a brand new user and log in?

Uwe

-- 
Novell Support Connection Volunteer SysOp

When I remove everything including dot directories like ~/.kde from the
homedir of my test account, and then log in with a KDE session, the
behavior is identical: blank page for "configure desktop" and just
the
network tab for kcontrol.  
The tree I've been barking up is a missing package, but this stuff
was in kdebase3 in SuSE 10.1.  In 10.3, rpm -V `rpm -qa | grep kde`
(verify all packages with "kde" in their names) reveals that all
packages are perfect except /opt/kde3/share/config/kdm/kdmrc has been
hacked (this for a test last year; currently I'm using gdm on that
machine).


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* jimc uclamath wrote, On 03/28/2008 06:06 PM:

> The tree I've been barking up is a missing package, but this stuff
> was in kdebase3 in SuSE 10.1.  In 10.3, rpm -V `rpm -qa | grep kde`
> (verify all packages with "kde" in their names) reveals that all
> packages are perfect except /opt/kde3/share/config/kdm/kdmrc has been
> hacked (this for a test last year; currently I'm using gdm on that
> machine).

It iis still in kdebase in 10.3. Did you try and reinstall kdebase? Can you try
kdm instead of gdm, as a test? Also try and update to the latest KDE (3)
version.

Uwe


-- 
Novell Support Connection Volunteer SysOp