hey johan, thank you for your answer! i did take a look at kscreen and actually found 2 entries - i don't know where the second one is coming from..
so i removed everything in the kscreen directory.. rebooted and then created a new image first it looked like this fixed the problem but then... after 14 reboots of the virtual machine it loaded the default plasma settings again :-( "desktop containment" was rewritten to an empty "folder view" and noone knows why this happens... another look at "kscreen" inside of the VM showed that a new element was created "name":"Virtual1" - but this element is created every single time and everything works as expected... except when it doesn't ;-) so i guess this should not be the problem cheers thomas On Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 5:41 PM Johan Ouwerkerk <jm.ouwerk...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 9:01 PM Thomas Weissel <valueer...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > the project "life-exam" https://life-edu.eu/exam.html strongly relies > on the features and capabilities of plasmashell. > > the kiosk system is at the heart of the project and the sheer number of > configuration options this shell provides makes all of this possible in the > first place. > > so at first, i want to say thank you! > > > > sometimes i run into a bug and because you have helped me iron out many > of those bugs before i'm trying again - cause this time this bug is a > showstopper. > > (it happens not just at first boot but when students switch into the > exam environment too) > > > > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=423421 > > > > for no reason plasmashell randomly RECONFIGURES a perfectly fine setup. > but not the entire setup - it switches from "desktopcontainment" to > "folder" and all widgets and the wallpaper are lost.. > > usually those widgets are preserved (at least on a manual switch) .. it > does not create a new activity.. the "default" activity - even the activity > icon is still the "original" > > > > > > A similar (maybe identical) thing used to drive me nuts on this Debian > unstable system. I eventually traced it back to kscreen getting > confused about the proper display configuration, which led it to feed > a new (fresh) config to KDED/Plasma which in turn would respond with > some 'helpful' defaults that effectively reset my preferences. The > system would make a mess of the following configuration: > > - What the "primary" screen should be > - What the resulting geometry/layout should be > - In general, the logical ordering of displays (i.e. is the HDMI > connection considered to be display 0, 1, or 2?) > - And what my preferred desktop containment, background etc. should > be for the affected displays > > This seemed to be related to the question of which one of HDMI, > DisplayPort or internal display (eDP) would be probed and found first. > That order isn't inherently stable and apparently it would confuse the > kscreen stack. For context: I have a multi-monitor setup with a laptop > (so on eDP display) and two identical monitors (one connected via HDMI > the other via DisplayPort). > > I'm no longer certain which of the following actions eventually helped > to 'fix' that: > > - At a certain point I removed the entire ~/.local/share/kscreen/ > directory > - Upgrading various components. Currently I'm running kscreen 5.17, > plasma-desktop 5.14 > > Hope it helps. > > Regards, > > - Johan Ouwerkerk >