kdm fails to start: "/usr/share/kde4/apps/kdm/themes/ethais cannot be opened"

can confirm this on both of my laptops :(

Had to fallabck to GDM and Gnome desktop to get system working

This is what sudo apt-get install plasma-netbook yields:

Paketlisten werden gelesen... Fertig
Abhängigkeitsbaum wird aufgebaut
Status-Informationen einlesen... Fertig
Einige Pakete konnten nicht installiert werden. Das kann bedeuten, dass
Sie eine unmögliche Situation angefordert haben oder dass, wenn Sie die
Unstable-Distribution verwenden, einige erforderliche Pakete noch nicht
erstellt wurden oder Incoming noch nicht verlassen haben.
Die folgenden Informationen helfen Ihnen vielleicht, die Situation zu lösen:

Die folgenden Pakete haben nicht-erfüllte Abhängigkeiten:
  plasma-netbook: Hängt ab: kdebase-workspace-bin (>= 4:4.3.98) soll aber nicht installiert werden
                  Empfiehlt: kdebase-workspace soll aber nicht installiert werden
E: Kaputte Pakete

HTH ET

Also of interest probably:

Looks like someone played with the dependencies

sudo apt-get install kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data python-kde4 python-qt4 python-sip4
Paketlisten werden gelesen... Fertig
Abhängigkeitsbaum wird aufgebaut
Status-Informationen einlesen... Fertig
python-qt4 ist schon die neueste Version.
python-sip4 ist schon die neueste Version.
Einige Pakete konnten nicht installiert werden. Das kann bedeuten, dass
Sie eine unmögliche Situation angefordert haben oder dass, wenn Sie die
Unstable-Distribution verwenden, einige erforderliche Pakete noch nicht
erstellt wurden oder Incoming noch nicht verlassen haben.
Die folgenden Informationen helfen Ihnen vielleicht, die Situation zu lösen:

Die folgenden Pakete haben nicht-erfüllte Abhängigkeiten:
  python-kde4: Hängt ab: python-qt4 (< 4.7.0-0ubuntu1+~) aber 4.7.0-2ubuntu2 soll installiert werden
               Hängt ab: python-sip4 (< 4.10.0-0ubuntu1+~) aber 4.10.0-2ubuntu2 soll installiert werden
E: Kaputte Pakete

After updating today and rebooting, had these exact same issues. Now I'm running in Gnome :-(

i have the same/
lucid//
what we can do?

Work around suggested by mrl586

Step-by-step instruction:
1. wget http://shtylman.com/stuff/new_kdm_theme.tar.gz
2. tar -xzvf new_kdm_theme.tar.gz
3. cd new_kdm_theme
4. sudo ./install.sh

I just tried this and can confirm it works, thanks goes to mrl586

Hello,

Thanks very much for the work around, it work for me too :P

I must say that's really a good news while except alpha1, no others build has worked to do testing.

best regards

Please forget my issue comments, those were due to "malicious" sources.list in /etc/apt

There is a rather cool site thta helps to clean out your sources.list if hopelessely misconfigured :O)

http://repogen.simplylinux.ch/generate.php

Greets ET

There's an even simpler workaround. In /etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc comment out the Theme and restart kdm. Now kdm won't have a theme, but so what?

#Theme=/usr/share/kde4/apps/kdm/themes/ethais

The deeper bug here is that kdm doesn't automatically fall back to "no theme" when presented with an invalid theme configuration.

Had the same problem, but KDE was fine with theme and all after logging in on the (boot) terminal and entered "startx"

I just attempted to execute mrl586's workaround.

It did not work for me.

The install script terminated with two errors because of dangling links:

background.pnp
and background-1920-1200.png

Fix was attempted from inside 10.04, recovery mode, Konsole, following mrl586 instructions step by step.

:

JFI: I've reported the bug that kdm does not fallback in this case at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=226057

Fixed with the 4.4.0 packages for Lucid.

This bug has reappeared with the KDE 4.6.2 update for maverick

i have tried all these replies and nothing worked for me.i was very close to reinstallation,but....
i typed in the terminal :
sudo apt-get install gnome

there was some time installing and then there was a window asking whitch desktop manager i want to set as a default
i didn't chose neither gnome or kde... i chose lightkdm, installation continued untill it was done

sudo reboot and when the lightkmd showes up chosed kubuntu-desktop session and....MAGIC !!! everything workes juuuust fine now...

i feel so good finding this on my own

i hope it will help somebody else !!!

bob's not my f****n uncle !