Dear Maintainer,

After an update of various kde-plasma related packages on Debian testing
(Forky) this morning 2025-10-25, the plasma-shell service was unable to load
the KDE system tray. Instead of the usual system tray icons, there was only a
single one displaying the message: "Error loading Applet: package  does not
exist."

I checked for service loading failures with systemctl: every service seems to
run normal.

Upon further investigation in journalctl, I found the following powerdevil
errors. When restarting the powerdevel service, I get the following messages:

org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error(s) opening ddc devices
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-12
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-13
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-14
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-15
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-16
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-17
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-18
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-19
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-20
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-7
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-8
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-9
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-10
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9166] (dw_recheck_displays_func) Recheck interval:
Sleeping for 200 milliseconds
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-11
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-12
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-13
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-14
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-15
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-16
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-17
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-18
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-19
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: [  9145] Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening
/dev/i2c-20
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: org.kde.powerdevil:
org.kde.powerdevil.chargethresholdhelper.getthreshold failed "Charge thresholds
are not supported by the kernel for this hardware"
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: org.kde.powerdevil:
org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper.brightness failed
systemd[4359]: Started plasma-powerdevil.service - Powerdevil.
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: org.kde.powerdevil: Handle button events action could
not check for screen configuration
org_kde_powerdevil[9145]: org.kde.powerdevil:
org.kde.powerdevil.chargethresholdhelper.getthreshold failed "Charge thresholds
are not supported by the kernel for this hardware"

Note, I use a desktop PC, so I guess the charge threshold helper failures are
expected.

While starting this bug report there was a message prompted, informing me that
my powerdevil powerdevil package is outdated. Not sure how this is related to
the issue. However, I doublechecked and my package manager is using the forky
repositories.

I am uncertain if these powerdevil errors are at all related to the system tray
problems, therefore I will file a separate bug report on that matter. Also I am
uncertain, if these erros can be ignored.

Many thanks and best regards
Chris

Here is a list of the upgraded plasma-related packages:

Install:
libplasmaactivities7:amd64 (6.5.0-2, automatic),

Upgrade:
libplasmaactivitiesstats1:amd64 (6.3.4-1, 6.5.0-1),
libplasmaactivities-data:amd64 (6.3.4-2, 6.5.0-2),
libplasmaquick6:amd64 (6.3.5-1, 6.5.0-1),
qml6-module-org-kde-activities:amd64 (6.3.4-2, 6.5.0-2),
plasma-desktoptheme:amd64 (6.3.5-1, 6.5.0-1),
libplasma6:amd64 (6.3.5-1, 6.5.0-1),
plasma-activities-bin:amd64 (6.3.4-2, 6.5.0-2)

Is it possible that the upgrade of some packages to plasma 6.5.0 while others remain at 6.3.x creates a problem? Maybe the issue goes away once powerdevil gets an upgrade to 6.5.0?

Hi Chris,

Am Samstag, 25. Oktober 2025, 17:12:34 Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit
schrieb crvr.fora@protonmail.com:

That is more than possible. Mixing Plasma version, i.e. some packages
are from Plasma 6.3 while others are from Plasma 6.5, is not supported
and may lead to very weird behaviour.

You can either downgrade libplasma & plasma-activities or wait a couple
of days until the rest of Plasma 6.5 has migrated to testing.

My laptop running debian testing had issues when resuming from suspend the
screen would remain blank.

There were errors in the journalctl about powerdevil.

The /dev/i2c-* files on my system were owned by root and the group is i2c.

After running these two commands the journalctl errors have stopped coming,
for now at least.

```
sudo apt install i2c-tools
sudo usermod -aG i2c $USER
```

Journalctl errors were the same as what you reported:

Error EACCES(-13): Permission denied opening /dev/i2c-*