KDE System Administration/Environment Variables: Difference between revisions

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== Introduction ==
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There are numerous environment variables that are useful when managing and controlling a KDE environment. Supported environment variables are listed below.
 
== Automatically Set Variables ==
 
=== KDE_FULL_SESSION  ===
Set to true by KDE startup, it is used by some programs, such as Konqueror, to know if they should consider remaining in memory for future re-use when being closed. If not set, those programs will exit after being closed (e.g. kdesu does that, it's also useful for debugging).
 
If you plan on using this variable to detect a running KDE session, check if the value is not empty instead of seeing if it equals true.  The value might be changed in the future to include KDE version information.
 
=== KDE_SESSION_VERSION ===
Introduced in KDE4, this environment variable is set to the major version number of the KDE desktop being run on startup. This allows one to know which <tt>kde?-config</tt> to run: <tt>kde${KDE_SESSION_VERSION}-config</tt>. For KDE3 this will resolve to <tt>kde-config</tt> and for KDE4 this will result in <tt>kde4-config</tt>. One can then use this knowledge to query more details, such as the minor version, prefixes, etc.
 
== Display and Window Management ==
 
=== KDEWM ===
If the KDEWM environment variable has been set, then its value will be used instead of <tt>kwin</tt> as KDE's window manager within the startkde script.
=== KDE_DISPLAY ===
An old(?) way to set DISPLAY for multihead.
=== KDE_MULTIHEAD ===
Set this variable to true to indicate that KDE is running on a multi-head system.
 
== File System ==
 
=== KDEDIRS ===
Overrides KDEDIR and allows you to specify multiple directories where KDE searches for its data. Useful if you want or have to install some programs to a different prefix than the rest of your KDE.
Please note that at least the startkde script expects the KDE install directory to be listed first.
=== KDEHOME ===
If not set, KDE uses ~/.kde as directory where your personal data is stored.
=== KDE_HOME_READONLY ===
Set this variable to indicate that your home directory is mounted read-only.
 
=== KDEROOTHOME ===
If not set, KDE uses ~root/.kde for root's personal data. This was introduced to prevent KDE from accidentally overwriting user data with root permissions when a user runs a KDE program after switching to root with "su".
 
=== KDESYCOCA ===
Allows you to specify the path and the name of the generated KDE configuration cache file.
=== KDETMP ===
Allows you to specify a path other than /tmp for KDE to store its temporary files.
 
=== KDEVARTMP ===
Allows you to specify a path other than /var/tmp for KDE to store its variable files.
 
== Localization ==
 
=== KDE_LANG ===
Allows you to override the KDE language configuration.  For example, "KDE_LANG=fr kprogram &" starts a program in French if the necessary files are installed.
 
=== KDE_UTF8_FILENAMES ===
If this environment variable is set, KDE assumes all filenames are in UTF-8 encoding, regardless of the current C locale.
 
== Networking ==
 
=== KDE_NO_IPV6 ===
Set this variable to disable IPv6 support / IPv6 DNS lookups.
 
=== KDE_USE_IDN ===
The content of this variable defines for which top level domains the usage of IDN is enabled. If not set, "at:ch:cn:de:dk:kr:jp:li:no:se:tw" will be used.
 
== Performance Related ==
 
=== KDE_IS_PRELINKED ===
Set this variable to indicate that you have prelinked your KDE binaries and libraries.
=== KDE_MALLOC ===
If set to "1" the fast malloc routine provided in kdecore is used if KDE was compiled with --enable-fast-malloc, otherwise the libc's routine is used.
 
=== KDE_NOUNLOAD ===
If this variable is set, then KLibLoader is told to never unload dynamically opened libraries.
=== KDE_DOUNLOAD ===
If this variable is set, then KLibLoader is told to always try to unload dynamically opened libraries. Warning, this will most probably lead to crashes!
 
== Troubleshooting and Debugging ==
 
=== KDE_DEBUG ===
Set this variable to disable the KDE crash handler (same as --nocrashhandler command line option).
 
=== KDE_COLOR_DEBUG ===
Starting with KDE 4, setting this variable will get you colorful debug output.
 
=== KDE_FORK_SLAVES ===
Set this variable to spawn KIO-slaves directly from the application process itself. (By default, KIO-slaves are spawned using klauncher/kdeinit.) This option is useful if the KIO-slave should run in the same environment as the application; this can be the case with Clearcase.
 
== freedesktop.org Compliance ==
 
The following environment variables are defined in the [http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/basedir-spec freedesktop.org base directory specification] and are supported by all XDG-compliant environments and applications, such as KDE.
 
=== XDG_DATA_HOME ===
Defines the base directory relative to which user specific data files should be stored. If <tt>$XDG_DATA_HOME</tt> is either not set or empty, a default equal to {{path|$HOME/.local/share}} is used.
=== XDG_CONFIG_HOME ===
Defines the base directory relative to which user specific configuration files should be stored. If <tt>$XDG_CONFIG_HOME</tt> is either not set or empty, a default equal to {{path|$HOME/.config}} is used.
=== XDG_DATA_DIRS ===
Defines the preference-ordered set of base directories to search for data files in addition to the <tt>$XDG_DATA_HOME</tt> base directory. The directories in <tt>$XDG_DATA_DIRS</tt> should be separated with a colon ':'. If <tt>$XDG_DATA_DIRS</tt> is either not set or empty, a value equal to {{path|/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/}} is used.
=== XDG_CONFIG_DIRS ===
Defines the preference-ordered set of base directories to search for configuration files in addition to the <tt>$XDG_CONFIG_HOME</tt> base directory. The directories in <tt>$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS</tt> should be separated with a colon ':'. If <tt>$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS</tt> is either not set or empty, a value equal to {{path|/etc/xdg}} is used.

Latest revision as of 13:20, 11 March 2016

This page is now on the Userbase wiki.