Hello!
Since a couple of days now I have been experiencing an issue with Kate where when I try to open a folder it will instead open my home directory and not show any files in there as well.
My question now is if there is a way to figure out what is wrong. Is there a place where logs from Kate are stored? Is there a way to open Kate in the terminal with logs?
Not quite sure if this is the correct place, if not let me know! Im currently running Kate version 24.08.3 on Fedora 41.
Thanks!
Hi - this would definitely be the right place to check with other KDE / Kate users!
Your instinct about opening Kate through the terminal to see if any errors are printed out there is one of the first places I tend to check, too - you could do that pretty easily by opening Konsole, then just typing kate if you have it installed as a standard/native Fedora package (if you installed Kate as a Flatpak, then it’s the slightly more verbose flatpak run org.kde.kate).
If nothing obvious shows up there, you could also check the overall system journal - the method I typically use for that is to trigger the event I’m curious about to happen, then go over to Konsole and run sudo journalctl --since=-1m, which lets journalctl look at things controlled by root as well. From there, I either search (press /, type what you want then press Enter) or just visually scan for anything that looks related.
To help narrow it down, though - when you mention “try to open a folder”, do you mean using the “Open” button or File > Open menus, or are you referencing the Documents sidebar in Kate?
Thanks,
Hello!
Thanks for your response. Running Kate through the console was one of the things I tried to do but if I execute the “kate” command in Konsole it will finish running the command and open kate but not show and logs. I could also not find any option in kate --help that avoids this behavior. I have also had a look in the overall system journal and could not find any logs in the time frame when I open a folder.
I have uploaded a short YouTube video showing the issue I am having. Unfortunately I cannot post links here or upload videos. The video id is K6xX5hWsYS0. If there is another way to show videos here lmk! (Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6xX5hWsYS0) I have attached an image explaining the steps I am taking below as well:
Thanks!
I encountered this a couple of times before. And it happens again. Can’t open a directory or a file from command line. If I want to open a file from command line, I need the entire binary /usr/bin/kate /path/to/file ( same for directory btw). If simply kate ~/Directory, the directory will open in /home each time and trying to open a file will show empty if I try kate /path/to/file. And the weird thing is, sometimes it’ll pop an error, sometimes not. Anyway, the error is a known thing: kf.coreaddons: Expected a KPluginFactory, got a KIOPluginForMetaData
Personally, I rarely use kate from command line anyway, but…
Mhm weird, this is not the same issue I am facing tho as I am not trying to open a folder with Kate using the command line but the built in ui.
Yes, I know. But since you mentioned that kate doesn’t show errors from command line… So, what happens if you enable the file manager plugin? (Can’t tell from the tiny screenshot if you have it enabled). Can you open directories in the plugin?
I added the YouTube link to your post above, and took a look…
Hmm, I see different behavior on my device (it opens the folder as a “project”, as you’d expect)…can you check and see what you have in your Kate settings (Settings menu > Configure Kate) in the Projects section, by chance?
Thanks for this suggestion! I tried enabled the “File System Browser” plugin and can open folders using the plugin now (that’s ok for my use case).
Glad it’s working for you!
My next suggestion would have been trying to create a new user on your system, and seeing if the Open Folder functionality worked in that new user account, so if you really want to dig in to that degree, that might be a good next step - but you’re certainly not obligated to!
I’ve tried that before cause I wanted to check if that chronic error popped up. It did. It’s a really weird thing because, like I said, it sometimes shows and, give or take an hour later, it doesn’t. Still can’t open anything from command line ( unless the full /usr/bin/kate is used) though. But I don’t use that kate command anyway. Just weired.
Probably a silly question on my end, but what does which kate come back with?
