Desktop settings and configuration disappeared (repeatedly)

[Reinhold Rumberger]

On Wednesday 14 July 2010, Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:
> It would appear that on Jul 14, Myriam Schweingruber did say:
> > On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 14:21, Michael Bona <mbona at web.de> wrote:
> > > Hi everyone,
> > > 
> > > I am using Kubuntu 10.04 with KDE 4.4.2.
> > > 
> > > I have just had my desktop settings disappear (again). What I
> > > mean is that after logging in I do not see me desktop with my
> > > panels, icons, widgets etc. as set up by ME but rather the
> > > standard desktop a new user might see.
> > > 
> > > This first happened after a distribution update from 8.10 to
> > > 9.04 (I think) then again on 9.10 to 10.04 and now for the
> > > first after a cold reset (push the reset button).
> > 
> > I had this quite recently when upgrading to KDE SC 4.5 RC on
> > Kubuntu 0.04. What solved my issue was to exit KDE and remove
> > all plasma configuration files in $HOME/.kde/share/config/ in a
> > command line session (which you can open with Ctrl+Alt+F1). You
> > can then return in the X session (which is on Ctrl+Alt+F7) and
> > restart KDE. Of course you will have to do your settings again,
> > but those should now be saved when you exit KDE next time.
> 
> If you'll try an idea from a FORMER kde user...
> 	{I USED to use kde exclusively, But kde4 chased me into
> 	 the arms of other desktops <E16, e17, & xfce (Xubuntu)}
> But I still lurk here and occasionally speak up.
> 
> Anyway On some of the distributions I've use I've had a similar
> problem with e17 losing all my user preferences. I found that by
> making a backup of ~/.e17 I could restore the backup of that
> directory tree to get my settings back.

<snip> 

> By backing up the entire kde directory structure you'd pretty much
> have to include the config files involved...

You'd also include a lot of application state in your backup, so that 
wouldn't be very wise. Myriam already mentioned the only directory 
that needs to be restored: ~/.kde/share/config

> Of course if you use this method you need to remember to redo the
> backup every time you change the slightest kde setting or you
> risk losing the changes upon restoring the old settings.

Yeah, well, you should do regular backups, anyway, and if they are 
frequent enough (mine are two days apart), you won't have to redo 
much unless you make major changes to your configs.

  --Reinhold