Bug#367072: kdm: fails to start KDE session with zsh as login shell
Package: kdm
Version: 4:3.5.2-2+b1
Severity: normal
After upgrading from previous version 3.5.2-1, I can no longer start a KDE
session : after logging in the session terminates immediately and I return
to the kdm login screen (this happens with zsh as login shell and not bash).
The .xsession-errors contains only two lines :
Xsession: X session started for bouttier at samedi 13 mai 2006, 11:35:47 (UTC+0200)
fold: nombre invalide de colonnes: `0'
After some investigation I see that :
- fold can be called with parameter "-w ${COLUMNS:-80}" within
/etc/X11/Xsession (from x11-common-6.9.0.dfsg.1-6) or its siblings, when an
error has to be reported
- /etc/kde3/kdm/Xsession executes /etc/X11/Xsession with the login shell.
For some reason when the login shell is zsh, $COLUMNS is set to 0 which seems
to be the cause the failure (if within /etc/kde3/kdm/Xsession I add a "unset
COLUMNS" line, the session starts)
- however this is not the end of the story, since /etc/kde3/kdm/Xsession was
actually unmodified since the previous version where the problem did not
occur. What changes with the new version is that the user's PATH set by kdm
no longer contains /usr/X11R6/bin nor /usr/bin/X11. This causes error
reports in /etc/X11/Xsession as xset, for instance, can no longer be found.
My current fix is to add to /etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc the line :
UserPath=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (900, 'testing'), (900, 'stable'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.15-1-686
Locale: LANG=fr_FR, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Versions of packages kdm depends on:
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.0 Debian configuration management sy
ii kdebase-bin 4:3.5.2-2+b1 core binaries for the KDE base mod
ii kdebase-data 4:3.5.2-2 shared data files for the KDE base
ii kdelibs4c2a 4:3.5.2-2+b1 core libraries for all KDE applica
ii libc6 2.3.6-7 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libgcc1 1:4.1.0-1+b1 GCC support library
ii libpam-runtime 0.79-3.1 Runtime support for the PAM librar
ii libpam0g 0.79-3.1 Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii libqt3-mt 3:3.3.6-2 Qt GUI Library (Threaded runtime v
ii libstdc++6 4.1.0-1+b1 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii libx11-6 6.9.0.dfsg.1-6 X Window System protocol client li
ii libxau6 6.9.0.dfsg.1-6 X Authentication library
ii libxdmcp6 6.9.0.dfsg.1-6 X Display Manager Control Protocol
ii libxtst6 6.9.0.dfsg.1-6 X Window System event recording an
ii xbase-clients 6.9.0.dfsg.1-6 miscellaneous X clients
Versions of packages kdm recommends:
ii logrotate 3.7.1-3 Log rotation utility
-- debconf information excluded
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