Extremely broken KDE after power outage

Support
,
1

Hello,

Requirements:

I have Searched the forum for my issue and found nothing related or helpful
I have checked the Resources category (Resources Index)
I have reviewed the Wiki for relevant information
I have read the Release Notes and Errata

OpenMandriva Lx version:
OpenMandriva Lx release 26.02 (ROME) Rolling for znver1

Desktop environment: KDE

Description of the issue:

It’s difficult to convey how borked this system is at the moment. I cannot even take screenshots.

  • My start menu is empty except for Recent Files and Power / Session.
  • Task bar icons do not load. Hovering over them shows bare names like systemsettings.desktop. Clicking them causes a system notification saying Unknown application folder.
  • I just barely managed to get some apps running by doing Alt+F2 and running commands like konsole or dolphin. (Experience :sob:)
  • Trying to take a screenshot opens Spectacle but it says An error occurred while taking a screenshot. KWin screenshot request failed: The process is not authorized to take a screenshot
  • Opening a file on Dolphin fails because KDE cannot find any applications.

I have tried:

  • dnf distro-sync
  • Rebooting.

Fellas, what the heck do I do at this point? (Don’t say reinstall :sob:)

Relevant informations (hardware involved, software version, logs or output…):

What would you like to see?

2

I have no idea off the top of my head, but lets start with figuring out what file system you have.

Is this Ext4 or BTRFS?

Do you have backups of your files, just in case?

Do you have, or have the the ability to create a new bootable USB installer of ROME, so you can boot into the live system to try to attempt repairs?

3

BTW, I don’t know where you are or what time of the day it is for you. Not sure as to when an expert might be here to help out.

4

I have BTRFS. I could start from zero without having lost personal files (that I can tell), but that of course would be quite bothersome. I am in a position to perform repairs if there is anything that can be done: I have konsole; I have dnf; I have helium. But what to do? I do not know enough about KDE to check like why it cannot figure out where apps are.

5

Was the system busy when the power failed? A simple file check might help, but let me see what to run on a BTRFS system

6

Before losing anything, I would suggest a bootable live USB and try to rescue your home folder. Then I would try running BTRFS file checker.

I am no expert on running that, but I know you would want to run it from the bootable USB, while that drive is not mounted.

7

I don’t know what busy would mean. I had apps open.

8

fsck makes sense. I’ll do that when I can.

1 Like
9

It means you were using the system and it was not idle.

There are instructions on running BTRFS Check, and they look to be easy to do. BUT you need to do it from the USB drive.

NOT FSCK. That is for Ext4.

1 Like
10

NOT FSCK. That is for Ext4.

Haha. Noted!

2 Likes
11

These are the documents for BTRFS. Would start here before running them.

Study that before doing anything else. It is already past my bedtime here. I am sure one of the experts can shed some light on this.

It may be a simple as booting to a previous snapshot, but I would still want to do a file system check before doing anything else.

2 Likes
12

When was your last dsync prior to this problem? dnf history list --reverse to show all dnf transactions, and dnf history info ## to show what changes were made in a specific transaction.

13 
26 dnf distro-sync --refresh --allowerasing 2026-05-31 17:26:43   8
27 dnf install wireguard-tools              2026-05-31 17:34:39   1
28 dnf install iptables                     2026-05-31 17:36:13   7
29 dnf install octave                       2026-06-14 02:31:31 109
30 dnf install code                         2026-06-15 00:38:22   1
31 dnf install git                          2026-06-15 06:13:37   3
32 dnf distro-sync                          2026-07-07 00:25:35   4
1 Like
14

Hello,

first test let’s see whether is the system borked or just the desktop

sudo dnf clean all ; dnf clean all
sudo dnf --refresh install xguest

Logout and enter the guest account.
Report if anything changed.

1 Like