Solved FreeBSD 14.2 amd64 April 2025 quarterly update KDE5 -> KDE6 issues

[Paul Floyd]

I just ran pkg update/upgrade on one of my systems with KDE as the desktop.

On rebooting sddm is starting twm rather than KDE (ewwww, I feel like I fell into a time machine and went back to 1997).

sddm.log does say

[07:41:45.266] (II) DAEMON: No session manager found

Any ideas what to fix?

 

[fff2024g]

yeah, i do same operation (pkg upgrade) . now, all Gnome GUI crash. no one can solve. just waiting for. this, i have use openbox type message in here. that was very bad experminaces . this computer was my daily working GUI desktop in freebsd14.2.....

 

[Paul Floyd]

I tried a second system, same problem.

Back on the first system I ran "pkg upgrade -f", that changed nothing.

And as if twm were not bad enough it gives me the choice of a US keyboard layout and nothing else.

 

[fff2024g]

hello paul:
try below step .

1. modify your /etc/pkg/FreeBSD,conf as below line
url: "pkg+https://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/latest",

2. pkg upgrade

we will install lastest package to replace quarterly .

this is a solution, i am not sure that can solve your problem.

 

[Paul Floyd]

What is htt going to fix? Quarterly packages are only about one day old.

 

[fff2024g]

What is htt going to fix? Quarterly packages are only about one day old.

i am new guy. i try this way to solve my problem and it's work.

 

[SirDice]

1. modify your /etc/pkg/FreeBSD,conf as below line

Do not edit /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf. If you want to switch to the latest repository, create a /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf:

FreeBSD: {
  url: "pkg+https://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/latest"
}

 

[Useradd]

yeah, i do same operation (pkg upgrade) . now, all Gnome GUI crash.

Me too, in Xfce. When I saw all the changes that were going to affect Xfce I aborted and tried it on my test system instead. It reboots but many things are missing and I cannot repair the environment. Looks like a fresh install will be needed if I cannot rollback the changes.

 

[Paul Floyd]

For KDE I think it's more likely that the changes to KDE 6 are the cause of the problem.

 

[fff2024g]

Do not edit /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf. If you want to switch to the latest repository, create a /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf:

FreeBSD: {
  url: "pkg+https://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/latest"
}

dear sirdice:
thanks for your advisement. i feillow this rule . thanks.

 

[fff2024g]

Me too, in Xfce. When I saw all the changes that were going to affect Xfce I aborted and tried it on my test system instead. It reboots but many things are missing and I cannot repair the environment. Looks like a fresh install will be needed if I cannot rollback the changes.

try use pkg latest packages to solve your issue. maybe right way as fast.

 

[SirDice]

latest and quarterly shouldn't be that different right now, a new quarterly was made a couple of days ago. New quarterlies are branched off from "main" aka latest.

 

[fff2024g]

latest and quarterly shouldn't be that different right now, a new quarterly was made a couple of days ago. New quarterlies are branched off from "main" aka latest.

dear sirdice:
this morning i have use pkg upgrade with quarterly in freebsd14.2 . my Gnome GUI desktop crash. then use pkg upgrade with latest all packages. gnome GUI desktop come back. nothing i have changed. it's every important for me with gnome GUI desktop for daily work.thanks. so i think latest was new more than quarterly.

 

[CeXP1917]

This is QQ, "Quarterly Quake", but my XFCE desktop alive. Some software gone away, but this is not important pkgs for me.
Is there some way to label critical packages in way "upgrade will remove %critical_pkg%, upgrade cancelled"?

 

[Useradd]

try use pkg latest packages to solve your issue. maybe right way as fast.

I tried, with the following, but it didn't change anything:

FreeBSD: {
url: "pkg+https://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/latest"
}

I'll try a clean install when I have time.

 

[siealex]

The same on my virtual machine with KDE. After logging in KDE crashes and reverts back to the login screen. Entering "startx" manually displays a bunch of lines ending with xinit: connection to X server lost. A couple of months ago I tried to install KDE 6 manually and it ran fine, but without most of its software.

 

[Paul Floyd]

The same on my virtual machine with KDE. After logging in KDE crashes and reverts back to the login screen. A couple of months ago I tried to install KDE 6 manually and it ran fine, but without most of its software.

Sounds about right. I just manually ran "pkg install plasma6-plasma-desktop" and now I can startx to get KDE running.

Next thing is to clear out any old KDE5 packages and install any missing KDE6 ones.

 

[hexaitos]

Similar problem here, xfce4-desktop and thunar are just gone for some reason and and whole bunch of other packages too. Checking FreshPorts shows that they're not in Quarterly anymore for… some reason? At least for amd64, aarch64 still has them in Quarterly. Very weird.

 

[siealex]

Installing (not upgrading!) plasma6-plasma manually from the latest repo partially solved the issue, KDE is at least starting up...

 

[siealex]

Now I have a different issue: pkg autoremove is trying to remove a lot of KDE software. WTF?

 

[hexaitos]

If I understand this correctly, some packages appear to have been skipped because of a problem with the building of webkit2?

 

[SirDice]

If I understand this correctly, some packages appear to have been skipped because of a problem with the building of webkit2?

You understood correctly.

 

[T-Aoki]

Now I have a different issue: pkg autoremove is trying to remove a lot of KDE software. WTF?

This is quite well known issue.
For packages installed by pkg, directly specified one (leaf package) is marked as non-automatic, and everything newly installed ones as dependencies are marked as automatic.

At least until some point (possibly still?), softwares installed via ports (including ones installed using pkg_replace, portmaster, portupgrade,...) are marked as automatic regardless it's leaf or not.

And pkg autoremove deinstalls all pkgs that are marked as automatic and no longer specified as a depencency of other pkg. So this problem happenes.

Related old thread here.

 

[SirDice]

If I understand this correctly, some packages appear to have been skipped because of a problem with the building of webkit2?

You understood correctly.

It's an older build log. Latest logs show a dependency on webkit2-gtk_40-2.46.6 instead of webkit2-gtk3-2.34.6_10. Still skipped due to webkit2-gtk failing to build though.

 

[hexaitos]

You understood correctly.

Sorry if the following questions have very obvious answers, but I am fairly new to FreeBSD and I am not quite sure how to proceed now: does this mean compilation will be re-tried at a later time or does it just mean those packages simply won't be in Quarterly until the next Quarterly release? I have switched to Latest (using the method outlined in the handbook) for now and re-installed the packages that aren't (yet) in Quarterly so that I can use my desktop properly. Should I switch back to Quarterly once the packages have successfully built or would staying on Latest also be fine?