Variety stopped working after update to KDE 4.11 Beta 2

[reyfer]

After updating my Kubuntu 13.04 to the KDE 4.11 Beta 2, Variewty stopped working. It still fetches wallpapers, it saves them in the right folders, but the wallpaper doesn't change automatically as is supposed to, I actually have to go into "Default Desktop Settings" and select the Variety wallpaper each time. I'm using the latest Variety

I'm attaching the log from the last run I did today

[Peter Levi (peterlevi)]

1. Please confirm in KDE's wallpaper settings that ~/.config/variety/wallpaper-kde.jpg is set as the wallpaper - this is mandatory for Variety to work under KDE.
2. Also please confirm that while running Variety, this file is actually changing to the newest image - i.e. open it in a viewer, close it, change to the next wallpaper in variety, open it again and it should be different now.

If both of these are true, this would mean Variety is updating the wallpaper image, but KDE is not picking up the change - this might be some a new problem with KDE 4.11, a change from the previous behaviour.

[reyfer (reinaldofer)]

Peter, I can confirm that the image does change in ~/.config/variety/wallpaper-kde.jpg, so yes Variety is updating the wallpaper image, but the desktop is not picking the change until I manually go into Desktop Settings and choose ~/.config/variety/wallpaper-kde.jpg again

[Peter Levi (peterlevi)]

This seems to be a new change (I'd say regression) in KDE and unfortunately they've removed the last somewhat decent way of changing the wallpaper there. I definitely do not want to rely on KDE-specific libs in order to achieve this, so if things stay this way, I'll be forced to simply remove KDE support completely.

[Peter Levi (peterlevi)]

Could you please try if using this command in a terminal will change the wallpaper:

kwriteconfig --file plasma-appletsrc --group Containments --group 1 --group Wallpaper --group image --key wallpaper <path-to-wallpaper>

Replace <path-to-wallpaper> with the full path to some image, or also try with "file:///path_to_some_image".

This is from this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=803417&page=2

Thanks.

[reyfer (reinaldofer)]

Peter, running that command in terminal does NOT change the wallpaper, only way to regularly change it is to set the Desktop Settings to use a folder or several folders for slideshow...

[reyfer (reinaldofer)]

One thing I noticed, if I leave Variety running, the wallpaper changes on next boot, using the last one set by Variety, but after that nothing

[Grant Ashman (thoughtcoder)]

I can confirm the same symptoms as reyfer. The image itself changes and the wallpaper is updated as next boot - but not during my time running KDE. Selecting "Next wallpaper" in playback does not work either.

[Christophe Badoit (1-launchpad-tof2k-com)]

I can confirm it too, KDE does not update the wallpaper as the file changes, since 4.11.

[Christophe Badoit (1-launchpad-tof2k-com)]

As I can see on http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20120730#qa, the kwriteconfig command needs plasma to be restarted, so it's no use for variety.

There seems to be a DBUS patch in the way, though.

[Peter Levi (peterlevi)]

Symptoms are clear, solution for now - none. I'm open to concrete suggestions - e.g. a bash or python script that successfully changes the wallpaper on KDE 4.11.

[Christophe Badoit (1-launchpad-tof2k-com)]

I've searched a lot, and only d-bus will be the solution - so nothing available at the moment.

I understand very well that you can do nothing. Thank you !

[Bob (bob53181)]

KDE 4.11 doesn't reload wallpaper image when changed, for an example when the wallpaper file is dynamically changed by the variety program. This is a regression from 4.10 where it was working fine. The provided link (https://bugs.launchpad.net/variety/+bug/1197075) shows that the bug affects other people as well.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set the wallpaper location to ~/.config/variety/
2. Start variety
3. Set the change wallpaper interval and wait for it to change the wallpaper
4. Check to see that the image is changes.
Actual Results:
The desktop hasn't reloaded the image and the wallpaper stays the same.

Expected Results:
The desktop should reload the wallpaper image.

If you go to desktop settings and click OK/Apply, the wallpaper reloads.

[R2R (are-two-are)]

Having the same problem on the main account.
For Accounts added after installation, the new wallpaper sticks...

AW

[James0r (james-auble2)]

Looks like others have already determined what the issue is, but I'm having the same problem as well with Variety changing wallpapers with the new version (4.11) of KDE. Symptoms are same as described above: no automatic or manual switching of the wallpaper by the Variety app. Wallpaper changes are only possible by opening desktop settings and re-applying the kde-wallpaper image.

[Peter Levi (peterlevi)]

This is only a partial solution, but still worth mentioning (NOT tested, please someone confirm in a comment if it works):

You can combine Variety's downloading feature with the built-in KDE wallpaper slideshow feature (download into the same directory that you have setup KDE to use as a slideshow). Variety's indicator won't be of big use in this case and you may as well turn it off, but you'll still have a slideshow with images fetched from the internet.

[Miklós Máté (mtmkls)]

Up until 4.10 I could change the wallpaper from a shell script by overwriting the file, but in 4.11 this doesn't work anymore. How do I change the wallpaper from a script now?

[Miklós Máté (mtmkls)]

Revision 78ed1699e8e73527d763996cdacdfc97f3557d0f of kde-workspace added a file watch for the current wallpaper file, and when that file was overwritten, the wallpaper got updated. Nice.

Revision baebc4e203da5d0457fdf68b50ee3b01a8b9f881 accidentally (?) removed this feature while implementing something similar for wallpaper slideshow. The new way to change the wallpaper from a script is the following: create a folder with a single image in it, set that folder for the source of the slideshow, and overwrite the image from your script. I use a symlink as the current image, and issue `ln -f -s ../newimage.jpg current.jpg` to update it.

[S8-kdebugs (s8-kdebugs)]

Thanks for the tip miklos. Specific to Variety, I've done the following.

$ mkdir ~/.config/variety/wallpaper_for_kde_slideshow
$ cd ~/.config/variety/wallpaper_for_kde_slideshow
$ ln -s ../wallpaper-kde.jpg .

Then, in the KDE wallpaper settings, set it to slideshow using this new directory (which only contains the single image). You have to set refresh time quite low (essentially "polling time"), so I'm not sure if there is a performance hit associated.

This workaround is fully functional, and Variety's indicator and functions still work.

[S8-kdebugs (s8-kdebugs)]

Mmm. Actually, this doesn't exactly work. After a while, the KDE slideshow starts traversing the directory and subdirectories of the target of the symlink. I've created bug 331223.

I suspect this new bug is caused by symlinks, so I tried to hack the code of variety to try and make it put wallpaper-kde.jpg into a directory that only contains this one file. I grepped through /opt/extras.ubuntu.com/variety for 'kde'. I modified the files share/variety/scripts/set_wallpaper and variety/VarietyWindow.py , changing
wallpaper-kde.jpg
to
wallpaper_for_kde_slideshow/wallpaper-kde.jpg

However, after creating the subdirectory and restarting Variety, it seems that it is still changing ~/.config/variety/wallpaper-kde.jpg , not ~/.config/variety/wallpaper_for_kde_slideshow/wallpaper-kde.jpg . Should I modify something else?

[LoREZ (ike-davis-net)]

I wonder if a hardlink would work? If not, you'd have to modify Variety's code so that it points to an empty folder to which it copies the wallpaper file.

I use a bash script I wrote to do a certain amount of what Variety does, and just copying the file to an empty directory does the job.

[Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond)]

I'm not sure what happened, but the softlink is working fine for me now.

It's similar to what I posted in comment #19, but the softlink is now on a different partition.

[Peter Levi (peterlevi)]

I have made it easy to apply the "slideshow" workaround my making Variety copy by default to ~/Pictures/variety-wallpaper/wallpaper-kde.jpg.

This also has the advantage that this not within a hidden folder and is easier to apply by beginner users. A new version with the fix will be released soon.

[Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond)]

Hard coding this location is not a good idea, in my opinion. In my case, ~/Pictures does not even exist. Further, I have an SSD and a spindle HDD, so almost all my documents are on the symlinked ~/HDD. I'd very much prefer Variety to not pollute my home directory with it's own visible subdirectory (~/Pictures).

Personally, I'd prefer Variety to be put the single image in a directory in somewhere "normal" like the config directory.

[reyfer (reinaldofer)]

Sparhawk, I'm not sure which distro you are using, Kubuntu, SolydK, Debian KDE, Kaos, every KDE distro I have tried has ~/Pictures

[Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond)]

I'm using Kubuntu. It may have had ~/Pictures originally, but since I have two drives, I've partitioned my filesystem appropriately. In my case, I use ~/HDD/Pictures .

[Peter Levi (peterlevi)]

@Sparhawk:
They are not hardcoded. The actual location used is not ~/Pictures, but $(xdg-user-dir PICTURES), i.e. it uses the XDG standard pictures folder, which you can relocate using Ubuntu Tweak or a similar tool, or by editing some config files - read here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xdg_user_directories.

Additionally, this behaviour can be tweaked using Variety's standard method for tweaking DE-specific stuff - by editing ~/.config/variety/scripts/set_wallpaper.

[Sparhawk (sparhawkthesecond)]

@Peter:

Oh, that's great. Thanks for that info. I wasn't even aware of xdg-user-dir. Cheers.

[Nate-b (nate-b)]

Hello!

This bug report was filed for KDE Plasma 4, which reached end-of-support status in August 2015. KDE Plasma 5's desktop shell has been almost completely rewritten for better performance and usability, so it is likely that this bug is already resolved in Plasma 5.

Accordingly, we hope you understand why we must close this bug report. If the issue described here is still present in KDE Plasma 5.12 or later, please feel free to open a new ticket in the "plasmashell" product after reading https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Bug_Reporting

If you would like to get involved in KDE's bug triaging effort so that future mass bug closes like this are less likely, please read https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved#Bug_Triaging

Thanks for your understanding!

Nate Graham