Hi everyone,
I encountered the exact same issue on a fresh CachyOS install with KDE Plasma. When trying to change the profile picture or user color in the KDE System Settings, the “Apply” action failed with an error.
The Root Cause
By debugging with journalctl -f, I found the following critical error from systemsettings in the logs:
"org.freedesktop.Accounts.Error.Failed" "creating temporary icon file failed: Das Dateisystem ist nur lesbar" (Read-only file system).
Checking the systemd unit with systemctl cat accounts-daemon.service revealed that the service has the following restriction enabled by default:
ProtectSystem=strict
This strict sandbox setting prevents the accounts-daemon from creating the necessary temporary icon files in the system directories, causing the KDE user module to fail silently or throw permission errors.
The Permanent Solution / Fix
The cleanest way to fix this without modifying upstream package files is to create a small systemd drop-in override that loosens this specific restriction for the accounts service.
Run the following commands in the terminal:
- Create the override directory:
sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/accounts-daemon.service.d
- Add the override rule to allow the daemon to write its temporary files:
echo -e "[Service]\nProtectSystem=false" | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/accounts-daemon.service.d/override.conf
- Reload systemd and restart the service:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart accounts-daemon
After applying this fix, changing the profile picture and user settings via KDE Plasma works flawlessly and instantly.
Hopefully, the developers can adjust the default ProtectSystem settings for the accountsservice package in an upcoming CachyOS update so it works out of the box!