Solaris/OpenSolaris/Status

Parent: KDE on OpenSolaris

When installing one of the latest development builds of KDE4 on OpenSolaris (2009.06), there's a number of changes to do to make the use of the desktop more convenient. Some of the suggested changes are below.

This page also lists some yet unresolved and highly visible problems with no workaround.

Font anti-aliasing

Is disabled in a fresh installation. Execute gnome-appearance-properties and select some better option in Fonts. Seems to be fixed in 4.3.90 and b130.

nwam-manager is spawned multiple times

Was tracked as 205529. KDE4 session is started with multiple instances of nwam-manager. As a result, systray has multiple nwam-manager icons.

There's an easy workaround, add the following to ~/.kde/share/config/ksmserverrc to [General] section: excludeApps=nwam-manager

More details in 205529.

Akonadi seems misconfigured

After login an akonadi error window is shown. You can get rid of the errors by calling

kwriteconfig --file kres-migratorrc --group Migration --key Enabled --type bool false

although a patch would be better.

Missing Reboot and Shutdown

Tracked as 186198. A simple workaround is available. This is also tracked in OpenSolaris as 1166.

Broken screen lock

Tracked as 184465. xlock can be used as a workaround. It could also be convenient to undefine the Ctrl+Alt+L shortcut and use System Settings -> Input Actions to redefine this shortcut to xlock.

To disable default shortcut:

System Settings -> Global Keyboard Shortcuts -> Run Command Interface
-> "Lock Session" (remove the shortcut)

To enable Ctrl+Alt+L as Input Action to spawn xlock:

System Settings -> Input Actions
right-click the left pane -> New -> Global Shortcut -> Command/URL
Trigger -> define shortcut
Action -> Command/URL -> xlock

Colission with SUNWvboxguest

When built and/or executed in a VirtualBox instance, there's a collision with the SUNWvboxguest package (VirtualBox guest additions). While building, this results in following sort of build error in FOSSqt: Undefined first referenced symbol in file XDamageDestroy /usr/lib/libGL.so XDamageCreate /usr/lib/libGL.so XDamageQueryExtension /usr/lib/libGL.so XDamageQueryVersion /usr/lib/libGL.so When using succesfully built packages in VirtualBox the KDE session startup fails.

This needs to be resolved in the build system.

Konsole gets disconnected from shell

no bugs.kde.org entry yet

In a konsole tab, you can break the link between the shell / session / tab output and konsole itself, so that nothing gets printed anymore. To reproduce this problem, you need to either hit ^C at an inopportune time (there's plenty of that) or produce an unusual output pattern. Here's a long-winded way of looking at the ^C issue:

start konsole
start a new tab for convenience
check that the shell is working, for instance by running ls
tail -f /var/log/messages
hit ^C; notice that tail is interrupted and the shell returns
ls again, to see the shell still works
at the shell prompt itself, hit ^C; you would expect a new shell prompt to be printed, but it is not
type "date > /tmp/foo ; exit" and it enter (without the quotes)
notice that /tmp/foo now exists with the right time and that the shell / session / tab closes

Here is a way of breaking the link without ^C but by producing a not-very-special output pattern. You need to have the C compiler installed:

start konsole
start a new tab for convenience
cd /tmp/usr/ucb/echo -n "#include <math.h>" > t.ccc t.c
notice how the shell prompt does not come back after the warnings printed by the C compiler
type exit to close the shell / session / tab

You cannot keep typing indefinitely in a session that is not reading output; it seems like eventually the output from the shell hangs as well. Also, you can hang konsole completely by doing this.