Could not find service 'kfmclient'

[vik]

Binary package hint: kde

Click on the Big K button lower right on the plasma desktop. In the top right corner of the popup menu is the word DESKTOP. Click on this and instead of displaying anything to do with the desktop an error is displayed:

Could not launch the browser:

Could not find service 'kfmclient'

I installed intrepid off the alternative install disk, then installed KDE on a clean machine.

vik@eegret:~$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu intrepid (development branch)
Release: 8.10

ii kde 5:48ubuntu1 the K Desktop Environment official modules
ii kde-core 5:48ubuntu1 the K Desktop Environment core modules

[Terence Simpson (tsimpson)]

Please install the package "kubuntu-desktop" and see if the problem persists

[vik (vik)]

Yes,that fixes it. Looks like there's a dependency hidden in there.

Vik :v)

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

The kde-core binary package needs to depend against kdebase.

[Bruno Léon (bruno-leon)]

Using kde 4.1.3 on Kubunut Intrepid this problem still exists.
Digikam --> Report Bug --> Launch bug report wizard raises the same error.

Although kfmclient is there as I can call it on the command line.

[Mitch Golden (mgolden)]

This is actually a general problem with all KDE3.5 apps under KDE4.

The issue appears to be that there are separate directories /usr/share/applications/kde and /usr/share/applications/kde4, and the desktop files construct separate sycoca files. Since kfmclient.desktop is only installed in the kde4 directory, the KDE 3.5 apps can't find it in their sycoca.

A simple fix is just to make a symlink from the kde4 file into the kde directory. I.e:

cd /usr/share/applications/kde
sudo ln -S ../kde4/kfmclient* .
kbuildsycoca

and the problem disappears.

I will be filing a bug against Konqueror for this, but it afflicts all KDE4 services in KDE3.5 apps.

[Trebacz (david-trebacz)]

The work around above worked for me, but not it should be a small -s in the symlink not -S

cd /usr/share/applications/kde
sudo ln -s ../kde4/kfmclient* .
kbuildsycoca

[Maarten Bezemer (veger)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running apport-collect 281679 and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[A.H.M. Donkers (a-h-m-donkers)]

Thanks for looking at the bug.

Can no longer test it with a currently supported Ubuntu version because
I have stopped using Ubuntu as a desktop OS (for quite a while now). It
did not sufficiently support the hardware in my Asus notebook.

Specifically the NVidia Optimus dual video card, for which a driver is
not made available by NVidia (NVidia in 2010: "no plans to support
Optimus on Linux at this time")and project Bumblebee had not yet started
at that time. Also a sdcard driver was not available and the USB 3.0
speed dropped to extremely slow because of driver bugs.

This lead me to conclude that Ubuntu (Linux in general) was not suited
as a desktop OS and I'd better switch to Windows (7). No regrets:
Windows 7 is a great improvement to previous versions and when I need a
server OS environment for e.g. webdevelopment I simply use either XAMPP
or VirtualBox to start Debian in a virtual environment.

IMHO: Windows is not a suitable server OS but Linux is not a suitable
desktop OS... The problem is not Linux itself but lacking commitment and
support from hardware manufacturers (which is a pity but nevertheless a
fact).

On 19-4-2012 10:23, Maarten Bezemer wrote:
> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
> Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to
> look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many
> changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem
> may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if
> you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test
> it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running
> apport-collect 281679 and any other logs that are relevant for this
> particular issue.
>
> ** Changed in: kdelibs (Ubuntu)
> Status: Triaged => Incomplete
>

[Mitch Golden (mgolden)]

This bug can be closed. The problem being described was really only going to be an issue during the time when there were KDE 3.5 binaries being run on a KDE 4 machine. This time is long past and so there is no need to keep this around.

I use KDE as my primary desktop and love it.