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KDE: How to fix “No greeter widget plugin loaded” error

14 April 2009 18 Comments

I was helping one of the staff today with their Debian setup. KDE somehow broke after they did an apt-get update. Turns out there must have been like 40-50 packages that must have been in the update and thus one of them broke during the upgrade.

Upon startup, there was a unique error message that came up with KDE during the startup phase — “No greeter widget plugin loaded. Check the configuration.” with an OK box. Clicking the OK box would lead to KDE exiting to shell. Reinstalling kdm had no effect. The fix?

apt-get install kdebase-workspace

Seems like the dependency of kde install/update is missing the kdebase-workspace package.

To check to see if this works, restart KDE by going to
/etc/init.d/kdm stop
/etc/init.d/kdm start

18 Comments »

  • Károly Nagy said:

    Thanks for a lot. It spares me a lot of time.

    # 15 April 2009 at 5:27 pm
  • jaminja said:

    Thanks for this. I just spent half a day on and off upgrading a
    Debian lenny to unstable and with it KDE 3.5.10 to 4.2.1 – had to
    do it but at 0400 I get that errormsg x-|. Fixed now, many thanks.

    # 30 April 2009 at 10:14 pm
  • brando said:

    Thanks for your precious info. :)

    I was upgrading from ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04. And, getting this “greeter widget” message and can’t get to the KDE windows.

    Now, I can get in the windows, but I can’t move the terminals, or anything that I open.

    # 5 May 2009 at 6:02 pm
  • Marc said:

    After an update on my Debian-pc I got the “greeter widget” error-message.

    I reinstalled kdebase-workspace through aptitude from a shell, rebooted and KDE worked fine again.

    Thanks

    # 18 May 2009 at 12:12 pm
  • Freitas said:

    Thank you !!!! You saved my day ! :)

    # 19 May 2009 at 10:57 am
  • Jonathan Busby said:

    I experienced this problem when I upgraded from KDE 4.2.3 to KDE 4.3 Beta 1 in Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty. Your solution worked perfectly! :D

    Thanks so much! :D

    # 21 May 2009 at 11:09 am
  • Jose said:

    Thank you.

    # 24 May 2009 at 7:25 pm
  • PB said:

    Thanks for a lot. It spares me a lot of time.

    # 28 May 2009 at 10:30 am
  • uldics said:

    Saved my day (at least second half of it), as i depend on my navigation software heavily.

    # 13 June 2009 at 3:11 am
  • Ales said:

    I got this error after upgrading to KDE 4.3 Beta 2 in Kubuntu 9.04. Thank you so much!

    # 13 June 2009 at 4:55 am
  • drobzone said:

    That just saved me a whole lot of time, I just restarted my pc and got the error.
    Re-installed the workspace and I am back on-line again.

    Thank you so much

    # 14 June 2009 at 4:41 am
  • fixl said:

    Thank you! You just spared me a lot of time :)

    # 15 June 2009 at 9:27 am
  • DIM said:

    Thanks a lot. You saved me a lot of time. That little 4.2 to 4.3b2 upgrade was a total disaster. I thought I’ll spend a lot of time with my new GNOME friend.

    # 18 June 2009 at 7:59 am
  • Howe said:

    Thank you.

    # 21 June 2009 at 6:41 pm
  • Troy said:

    Thanks so much! Tried to update my kubuntu and it failed. Then came up with that error.

    Lucky you were here to save me! :)

    # 23 June 2009 at 6:40 am
  • Voltaire said:

    Always nice to see that someone took the time to post this useful (and working) resolution to this otherwise annoying error.

    Thanks!

    # 29 June 2009 at 3:25 pm
  • Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard said:

    The solutions with KDE4…

    Moaning about the problems with software is one thing and it might serve as a warning to people considering that software, but more important is to find solutions to problems and explain them. In fact, while I was working on solving my KDE4 problems I…

    # 26 July 2009 at 6:07 pm
  • Wulfram said:

    Had the same symptom/problem too, buy your solution didn’t work for me. However reinstalling kdebase-workspace-kgreet-plugins package did :D

    # 14 August 2009 at 4:35 pm

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