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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: OT: Fwd: Re: Lost all KControl modules
From:       Irwin K <emerald-arcana () rogers ! com>
Date:       2002-06-28 3:15:05
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On Thursday 27 June 2002 11:43 pm, Irwin K wrote:
> This is of off-topic interest to those who've been following the thread
> about KControl modules.

> I did some investigation and it seems that if you have write access to the
> "global KDE settings", KMenu makes the changes there instead of in your
> homedirectory.

Let's say you're a System Administrator.  You want to edit the system-wide 
accounts.  You accidentally delete the KControl modules using the KMenu 
editor.

Suddenly, you're going to be stuck with no KMenus (all system wide) and a lot 
of angry users who can't use KDE anymore because their menu is broken.

Worse, this is an *UNRECOVERABLE* option.  Because you've destroyed the only 
working copy of a KMenu on your system, you can't recover your changes 
without going to your server snapshot or something inconvenient like that.  
There's no tool to "restore default settings" or "undo" or even simply 
copying from a default location.

So yes, maybe it's silly for me to have installed KDE as a user and deleted my 
settings, but I think that this should be reversible.  If you delete your KDE 
settings, you should be able to, at the least, go to 
$KDEDIR/lib/defaultsettings.tar.gz or something and untar it to make a new 
$KDEDIR/share/applnks directory.

The problem really isn't in that KDE needs backups, the problem is that it's 
EASY to go in as root and delete your kicker icons, and it's EASY to delete 
your KMenu (consequently busting your KControl).  It's easy to totally 
destroy your KDE setup for ALL of your users.  Even if you're a talented 
sysadmin, you'll probably end up sitting there, wondering what the hell 
you're going to do now.

so that's what my beef has become.  Anyway, that's it for now... will work on 
patch.

-- 
-- Arcana  (Irwin)
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