How do you totally block a KDE session from starting?

Bonus points for getting no error messages out of the logs.

Answer?

Install two dodgy TrueType fonts amongst scores one night, forget about it, then turn the machine on again next morning.

kdm breaks. kde breaks. startx breaks. startx konsole breaks... but startx xterm survives.

So... “konsole” into that yields a SEGFAULT (Signal 11).

Hmmmm. “strace konsole” into that yields consistent death after processing a font named Alphabet_2. Remove Alphabet_2 from /usr/share/fonts/....

“strace...” on that yields consistent death after BERLIN_REDRAIN. Sigh. Look forward to an afternoon with rm as your friend. Remove REDRAIN.

Everything springs back to life. Whew!

Comments

Leon RJ Brooks said…

It seems that you can completely unhinge OpenOffice as well... to the point where it puts up a splash-window, half-starts, then silently disappears.

This was one of the Type1 fonts (pfm), & rather than both identifying individual criminals, I shot the lot (the marvels of BASH: for f in $(ls ~path/to/downloads/); do x=$(basename $f .ttf); rm -vf $x.*; done).

It seems that the font installer didn’t actually care that a file named .ttf was actually .pfm. It installed them anyway.

21 February, 2008 12:54

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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