kde3 panel controls gone and zypper dup

By basd on Mar 28, 2010 | In kde4, linux, opensuse

I am not alone in discovering the kde3 panel controls are gone.

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Using kcontroledit I learned that kcontrol launches "kcmshell panel" for panel options. Unfortunately, running that command gives me a featureless control window. "panel" is still an option in the kcmshell list, but what has happened to the actual panel controls?

Research showed that someone solved this problem by running "zypper dup". That turns out to be a distribution update, which is somehow different from zypper up. So, I am running zypper dup, which is making a number of changes to my install, including downgrading some things (I don't know why). So, it remains to be seen what I will have when this is all said and done. Nor do I know what library I will find the panel controls in.

This problem is on my x64 machine. I had the similar problem on my i586 machine, but I had installed more kde 3.5 packages via YAST and got the panel controls back. Did not work on this machine.

More to follow, I guess.

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Wait a minute! -- I just realized the panel editor is working okay on my OTHER x64 machine. What gives? (I truly have no idea ...)

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Later: Ok, I can report the zypper dup process did not solve the problem. So, I've got one computer that the panel configurator works on and one that it does not work on -- and both have presumably identical installs. So ... I now suspect there is an error in a hidden user configuration file. But which one??? I have no idea, though I will now look for a kcmshell.rc.

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Later, later: I give up. It looks like a permissions problem, because I discovered "kcmshell panel" will run fine in root (or su mode), but then of course it edits the root desktop panel(s). But, it won't run in my regular user, nor in a new test user I created. I would assume that if I had an inadvertent permissions error in my regular user, a new user would not be encumbered in this fashion. However, the new user can't invoke the panel configurator, either. So, the software is installed, but just won't run in regular user mode.

As I say, I give up. I have no idea what I am looking for and none of the forums I have searched has offered a solution.