Comment 6 for bug 80444

I just updated everything, and I still get nothing in the kcontrol window.

$ dpkg -l kdebase
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==================-==================-====================================================
ii kdebase 3.5.6-0ubuntu4 base components from the official KDE release
bogdanb@bogdanb-laptop:~$ dpkg -l kcontrol
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==================-==================-====================================================
ii kcontrol 3.5.6-0ubuntu4 control center for KDE

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kcontrol also throws several warnings/errors on the command line when run. (Though the windows shows up, empty.) Perhaps they can help:

*******************************
$ kcontrol
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 169
  Major opcode: 145
  Minor opcode: 3
  Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 169
  Major opcode: 145
  Minor opcode: 3
  Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
kcontrol: WARNING: No K menu group with X-KDE-BaseGroup=settings found ! Defaulting to Settings/
bogdanb@bogdanb-laptop:~$ sudo kcontrol
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 169
  Major opcode: 145
  Minor opcode: 3
  Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 169
  Major opcode: 145
  Minor opcode: 3
  Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
kcontrol: WARNING: No K menu group with X-KDE-BaseGroup=settings found ! Defaulting to Settings/
ERROR: Communication problem with kcontrol, it probably crashed.
*************************
Here I was returned to the shell (the console process stopped), but the window was shown and remained there. Several other errors continued popping up in the console.
*************************
bogdanb@bogdanb-laptop:~$
kdeinit: Shutting down running client.
---------------------------------
It looks like dcopserver is already running. If you are sure
that it is not already running, remove /root/.DCOPserver_bogdanb-laptop__0
and start dcopserver again.
---------------------------------

X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 169
  Major opcode: 145
  Minor opcode: 3
  Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 169
  Major opcode: 145
  Minor opcode: 3
  Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
kbuildsycoca running...
Reusing existing ksycoca
kio (KService*): WARNING: The desktop entry file /usr/share/applications/DefaultPlugins.desktop has Type=Link instead of "Application" or "Service"
kio (KService*): WARNING: Invalid Service : /usr/share/applications/DefaultPlugins.desktop
kio (KSycoca): ERROR: No database available!

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This behavior is consistent. It always throws the short error list when run normally, and a longer one & the console process quits when run with sudo.