KDE Connect suddenly refusing to start

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1

It worked untill I rebooted, after which kde connect just didn’t start on boot.
I ran kdeconnectd in the terminal to find this

╰─λ kdeconnectd
2025-05-04T12:46:29 qt.network.ssl: The backend "cert-only" does not support QSslKey
2025-05-04T12:46:29 qt.network.ssl: Active TLS backend does not support key creation
2025-05-04T12:46:29 qt.network.ssl: The backend "cert-only" does not support QSslKey
2025-05-04T12:46:29 qt.network.ssl: Active TLS backend does not support key creation
2025-05-04T12:46:29 kdeconnect.core: Private key from "/home/harshnj/.config/kdeconnect/privateKey.pem" is not valid!
2025-05-04T12:46:29 qt.network.ssl: The backend "cert-only" does not support QSslKey
2025-05-04T12:46:29 qt.network.ssl: Active TLS backend does not support key creation
2025-05-04T12:46:29 default: Could not generate the private key
2025-05-04T12:46:29 default: "KDE Connect failed to start" : "Could not generate the private key."
2025-05-04T12:46:29 default: "KDE Connect" : "Could not store private key file: /home/harshnj/.config/kdeconnect/privateKey.pem"
2025-05-04T12:46:29 kdeconnect.core: Generate Self Signed Certificate failed to read private key  "error:07800069:common libcrypto routines::provider section error"
2025-05-04T12:46:29 default: Could not generate a certificate
2025-05-04T12:46:29 default: "KDE Connect failed to start" : "Could not generate the device certificate."
fish: Job 1, 'kdeconnectd' terminated by signal SIGSEGV (Address boundary error)

The certificate files were empty after this, and the kdeconnect config (~/.config/kdeconnect/config) had this new line added to it keyAlgorithm=EC under the General section. Thank god I have been backing up my configs using git for a long time now… I restored the key files, ran again and same error.

I am on Hyprland/Arch with the latest stable kdeconnect and qt-* packages

2

Also, seems to be related that I use albert launcher, it starts on login, and the unit converter plugin in it raises a qt ssl error too, but If I disable and enable and plugin, it works normally

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3

Hi - not an expert by any means but just checking, is openssl installed and up-to-date on your system? I’m asking since those look like errors that have come up for others in the past, with other Qt-based software, where something involving that package version wasn’t quite lined up correctly?

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4

Hi - I solved the problem thanks to the people on the Arch Linux discord server.

Actually the problem was this line

legacy = legacy_sect

added to the openssl config file somehow (/etc/ssl/openssl.cnf)
I removed it and everything worked nicely immediately.

Thanks for the reply.

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