KDE4 login screen is missing background (regression: 4.0.4)

[Jonathan Thomas]

Binary package hint: kdm-kde4

After upgrading to KDE 4.0.4, the login screen now doesn't have the nice background it had. (EOS wallpaper) Now it has a grayish background that used to appear before EOS was painted. When the login dialog goes away, you can see EOS behind where the login dialog was.

[Lydia Pintscher (lydia-pintscher)]

I can confirm that.

[xRaich[o]²x (raichoo)]

I can confirm that too. Looks like Qt4.4 causes various problems in KDE 4.0.4 producing several visual glitches in Konqueror, the kde systray and KDM.

[SpookyGhost (francesco-g)]

I confirm the kdm-kde4 background problem in both my computers. i have also several visual glitches in the screeen saver.

[flaccid (chris-xhost)]

I can confirm this also.

When I click on the menu dialog it renders the wallpaper for that area after the dialog hides so its like the wallpaper is there somewhere behind that or something.
I tried to play around with kdm configuration of wallaper and themes and could not get any background to display.

[flaccid (chris-xhost)]

If I goto a tty via ctrl+alt+f1 for example and then go back to the KDM tty, then wallpaper is then rendered correctly - like a refresh helped it.
Hope this helps the devs t fix this bug.

[Lydia Pintscher (lydia-pintscher)]

http://websvn.kde.org/?view=rev&sortby=date&revision=806515
This should fix it. I will work on a fixed package as soon as possible.

[Lydia Pintscher (lydia-pintscher)]

Here is what I got so far. It is not finished yet but feel free to pick up where I left as I will be away for a few days. Else I will take another look at it when I get back.

[hara (harak-iitm)]

I had done a clean install of kubuntu kde 4 remix... I did not have this problem then. I did a dist-upgrade and the background screen of kdm got disappeared...I confirm all of the above reports about the bug.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

If nobody gets around to finishing the backport, the fix will be included in KDE 4.0.5.

[hara (harak-iitm)]

based on flacid's report, here is a dirty trick to get the screen work.

create the following file

sudo touch /usr/lib/kde4/bin/preloadkde

#include the following code in the file

#!/bin/bash
sleep 1
chvt 1
sleep 0.005
chvt 7

then change permissions

sudo chmod a+x /usr/lib/kde4/bin/preloadkde

thats it next time you log in you should find the background. or else play around with the numbersw in the code.

check the "/usr/lib/kde4/etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc" file to know why it works.
I think this might not work whenyou logout.

As I said its a dirty trick. But if it will be fixed in kde 4.0.5 as Jonathan says and if that is soon enough I am willing to wait and use this dirty trick.

[hara (harak-iitm)]

here is another piece of code that you might want to add to your preloadkde file (see my previous comment).

sleep 0.5
xrefresh -white

This is definitely less annoying than my previous post

[Lydia Pintscher (lydia-pintscher)]

This should be fixed with 4.0.5.

[hara (harak-iitm)]

4.1 has been released and is available in a ppa. I have installed it and the login screen is now fine