We have been trying to track down a bug with KDE people that effected FC6, FC7, etc. and Ubuntu users. The bug is reports in the /var/log/messages file like: kdm_greet[28386]: Internal error: memory corruption detected See, http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=147454 Well, finally we traced it to the kdelibs-3.5.7-ICEauthority.patch where the last setenv command resets the HOME environment prematurely for kdm, which should remain as /tmp/.some-random-numbers. Needless to say we spent a lot of time tracking this down. What is the purpose of this patch? Should the 1 in setenv for HOME be 0?
Also, with this patch /tmp directory fills up with directories /tmp/xxxxx since kdm cannot clean its tmp directory, which changes to /root. We are lucky that kdm does not remove /root by accident during cleanup!
Looking at what the patch fixes (running KDE apps with sudo corrupting permissions in user home directories), I wonder if the KDM log message isn't the lesser evil.
I have spent enough time trying to track this down. The bottom line seems to be that whatever needs to be done for sudo should be coordinated with kdm/kde. As I said in comment #1, it would have been easy to delete /root since kdm has "rm -rf ..." in the cleanup code for kdm and you don't want this happening suddenly if KDE folks are not aware of this problem/change. Could one put test to the patch to check if the application is kdm, kdm_greet, etc. Or someone has to patch kdm to not use HOME environment.
So this looks dangerous indeed.
fwiw, it looks like omitting this patch fixes the XDMCP problems folks have reported also.
Then killing it is probably the right thing to do after all, but we should try to work together with upstream and Kubuntu for a non-hack solution to the original sudo problem. (I don't think this issue is going to magically go away with KDE 4 either.)
%changelog * Mon Jul 09 2007 Rex Dieter <rdieter[AT]fedoraproject.org> - 6:3.5.7-9 - omit ICEauthority patch (kde#147454, rh#247455) devel/rawhide only for now, will likely push an update for FC-6/F-7 soon.
Don't forget that we still need Than to push the FC6 update (unless F6 gets merged).
i use a fc7 system that was dist-upgraded from fc6. before the upgrade i could connect remotely to the server running kdm i use an LTSP setup on the server, which means we have terminals connecting to the server. i followed the bug report that was filed with kde and this thread too. i've downloaded the latest kdelibs 6:3.5.7-9 from rawhide and installed it. indeed the memory corruption is gone but still i can't login :-( i run kdm with debug level 7, so i can provide the logs if it's helpful. how can i help to solve this ? kindly, nadav :-)
kdelibs-3.5.7-9.fc7 has been pushed to the Fedora 7 testing repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
Nadav, your problem "can't login" is highly likely a separate issue, please file a separate bug report, including details of your symptoms.
Created attachment 159473 [details] unable to login with kdm - log file
i've just installed the testing packages and i still can't login. i can't login from remote or with Xnest (inside root session) although i can Switch User --> Start new session from KDE with no problem. i'm attaching a kdm log, in case you can point me to what i'm doing wrong
> i've just installed the testing packages and i still can't login. This confirms what Rex Dieter said: Your problem is separate, please file a separate bug report.
i've started a separate bug report 248653: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=248653
kdelibs-3.5.7-9.fc7 has been pushed to the Fedora 7 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.