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**Snowhog** · Oct 31, 2010, 10:22 AM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

Desktop PC or laptop?
What graphics card/GPU do you have - ATI, nVidia, ?

**dibl** · Oct 31, 2010, 10:59 AM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

Did you keep the old /home partition?

**bernieszu** · Oct 31, 2010, 11:04 AM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

Desktop old Intel Celeron CPU 959Mb, 2.8Ghz . Think the graphics card is ATI but not 100%sure and can't tell you by checking in CLE because the terminal won't let me navigate using up and down keys, so if I do lshw, it spits out reams of stuff so fast I can't read it and won't let me browse back up through it to find the info about the graphics!

Another strange thing is that when I try to follow dibl's suggestion to do
mv /home/bernie/.kde /home/bernie/kdebackup
it says that the .kde file doesn't exist!!!!!!
Can't figure this out at all.

Hi dibl. No I didn't keep anything on this box. I backed up everything to external storage and chose thoption to make the whole system this new kubuntu. That's why I'm so surprised to have this problem. If 'root' permissions in my old homefolder were causing problems before, that should have disappeared now, shouldn't it? I've kept NOTHING from before on this box.

Thanks,

Bernie

**Snowhog** · Oct 31, 2010, 11:09 AM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

Using lshw, you can run this:

Code:

lshw | grep aphic

You can also just run lspci:

Code:

lspci | grep aphic

**dibl** · Oct 31, 2010, 11:32 AM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

Originally posted by bernieszu

Another strange thing is that when I try to follow dibl's suggestion to do
mv /home/bernie/.kde /home/bernie/kdebackup
it says that the .kde file doesn't exist!!!!!!

That would certainly be consistent with the observed problem.

Hmmmm. I have to think something went wrong with the installation, although I don't doubt you were careful at each step. Which filesystem are you using? I'd recommend ext4. Is the partition large enough -- 6 GB or more?

If you used the Live CD, maybe you could do better to start over with an Alternate Install CD.

**bernieszu** · Oct 31, 2010, 11:52 AM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

Snowhog,
Here's where my idiot factor truly comes into play. My keyboard on the linux box is an odd Spanish one, because I'm in China and last year I needed a new keyboard quickly and they only had a spanish one. And it worked fine and I neverbothered to replace it. But when I installed the new kubuntu, the spanish one on the keyboard options during installation didn't look anything like mine so I chose the american keyboard option, because it looked more like what I have (now that I've painted over everything on the keys

) BUT I cannot for the life of me get the damned thing to make the upright line symbol ( | ) between lshw and grep because the computer now thinks that key means (>). And I can't change the keyboard. I'm writing this on my laptop. Is there any way to issue the command that doesn't involve that wee line? And yes, I'm well aware that's probably the stupidest question you've ever been asked on here.

Dibl
Filesystem is ext4 and partition is about 160GB! Will try out the alternate install CD tomorrow - it's nearly 2am now here.

Thanks again

**Snowhog** · Oct 31, 2010, 12:04 PM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

The pipe symbol on an American keyboard, is on the backslash key ( \ ) and so, shift+\ gets you the pipe symbol. The 'old school' way to find it otherwise, is, in a console or within an open document file, press+hold the shift key and start pressing each of the keys with symbols on them (all the number keys, and the other non-alphabet keys) until you find it.

**bernieszu** · Oct 31, 2010, 12:16 PM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

Oh Snowhog,
I'm not THAT stupid

! The problem is that on this strange keyboard you get the pipe symbol (thanks for telling me the name) by pressing AltGr and the number 1. Okay in a document but if I do that in a terminal, it brings up something called argument 1. It has never been a problem before because I could always write the command in a document and then copy and paste it into the terminal. I like doing that anyway as I'm less likely to make syntax errors that way.

Ah well, think I'll call it a night and try the alternate install CD tomorrow - and buy a proper keyboard while I'm at it!
Thanks again.

**woodsmoke** · Oct 31, 2010, 01:15 PM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

for what it's worth, I had what I think is the same "login loop" thing you mentioned when I did not have a hard drive on the IDE cable. I usually do that when testing a live cd. But, when I plugged in a hard drive I got onto the live DVD just fine.

I have NO idea why that happened, it is just a comment and may be related to your "Spanish" keyboard.

woodsmoke

**bernieszu** · Nov 01, 2010, 01:00 AM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

Thanks woodsmoke, but I'm definitely in on the hard drive.

Just did the alternate install CD and still stuck in the loop but may have gained some useful information.
It all went very smoothly, and it detected my keyboard as being 'latam' which I assume means 'Latin-American' and that would make sense.

I made notes as it was installing but nothing out of the ordinary till right at the end and then this:

finishing the installation
(2.30pm) at 22% - wiping swap space for security -may take a while
(2.35pm) option – Is system clock set to UTC? I wasn't sure but chose yes
installation complete - ejected cd
system reboot
F1 to continue
flashed a message the “the disc drive for dev mapper ….. (sth too fast for me to read) is not ready or not yet present” then went to login screen.
LOOP!

Cannot attempt to login from console as it is unuseable, though if I interrupt the boot sequence right at the start I get a useable but not navigable terminal that is in one or another tty.

So it looks like this alternate install has at least found what the problem is, though I have no idea what the 'disk drive for dev mapper' is. Off to google it. Any suggestions?

Oh! by the way, my BIOS shows a floppy disk of about 1.4 Mb even though there is none on my system and it always says 'floppy drive fail (40) when the system is booting. AFAIK this is something to do with the age of the system and has NEVER been a problem in the past, but now I'm wondering........

....okay, have googled and seen lots of problems reported and saw that it was a bug in ubuntu lucid at one point?
Managed to get into a console and did dmesg - and right at the end of dmesg it said this:

[ 16.718431] Adding 2811896k swap on /dev/mapper/cryptswap1. Priority:-1 ex
nts:1 across:2811896k

What is that and does cryptswap mean encrypted? I chose the option to encrypt my /home during the installation process - could that be causing the problem? Would it be better to reinstall and NOT encrypt /home?

still googling.....

...and another thing.
Decided to try to get into 'Konsole' because that might let me navigate the output, but when I put the command in I get this message:
KUnique application: Cannot find the D-Bus session server: "/bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error: Au
launch error: X11 initialisation failed
(There mau be some latters or words missing from this because they run off the edge of the screen and I can't NAVIGATE in this terminal!

Finally found the pipe symbol (didn't realise a broken upright line was the same as a solid one) and tried Snowhog's suggestions but still get too much output from the command lspci and won't give me any output from lshw - just briefly shows 'sysfs' and then goes back the the command line.

Think I'll go back to the aternate cd and try the 'recover system' option that I saw on there. Worth a try

**dibl** · Nov 01, 2010, 04:37 AM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

Originally posted by bernieszu

Would it be better to reinstall and NOT encrypt /home?

Yes, it looks like that might be the source of the problem. If it works with no encryption, then you'll know for sure.

**bernieszu** · Nov 01, 2010, 05:43 AM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

Thanks dibl,

Will try that now and report back. Here's hoping!

....made no difference. Still at login loop, so thinking it's my hardware that's the problem.

Managed to get into a menu I had never seen before (and don't know what I did to get into it!) that had a number of options including run in failsafe graphics mode - didn't work. Tried 'reload grub' made no difference, then tried 'fix broken packages' and then waited nearly an hour while the computer downloaded and upgraded about 128 packages, but at the end of all that I'm still in the login loop and the console login option gives me an unusable console!

Don't know if this is of any use, but after it fixed the broken packages and I tried 'resume normal boot' I got this:

rc-sysinit start/running, process 20062
acpid: starting up with netlink and the input layer

init: apport pre-start process (20068) terminated with status 1
* Starting Common Unix Printing System: cupsd
acpid: 36 rules downloaded

acpid: waiting for events: event logging is off

init: apport post-stop process (20094) terminated with status 1
* Checking battery state.... [OK]
init: plymouth -stop pre-start process (20204) terminated with status 1

Don't know why that printing stuff is there because my printer is not attached to the system at the minute. But maybe this is all immaterial anyway.

I'll just have to bite the bullet I think and invest in a newer system.

**kyonides** · Nov 01, 2010, 11:00 AM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

I don't really think you should invest in a newer system than the one you already have there just to install Lucid. It's working fine on a kind of old computer where I install it so it might not be a problem involving all your hardware. I guess it could be caused by your graphics card not being properly configured (yes, sometimes it happens because X server crashes) or by your encrypted partition...

Besides you can always hit Alt+(any function key) or Alt+Ctrl+(any function key) to get to a console screen and log into a console tty shell and then run startx which would definitely let you log into your desktop and let you change your keyboard settings in System Settings.

**dibl** · Nov 01, 2010, 11:47 AM

Re: Login loop after fresh install

Something is clearly going way wrong behind the scenes, while the installation is supposed to be in process. I can't help being suspicious of the old hardware, but I don't know where to point. Since it appears that some files are not actually being read off the CD and installed on the hard drive, I guess the first suspect would be the optical drive, and the second suspect would be the hard drive. If you can figure out how to test them, individually, you might get some clue as to which one is the bad actor. But usually the only practical way to test a component is either to replace it and see if the problem disappears, or connect it to a different computer and see if the problem follows the component to the other system. I agree with kyonides that you probably don't need to buy a whole new system just to install Kubuntu, but apparently one component of your system is not up to the job. That means you're probably facing a decision as to whether to attempt repairs or throw in the towel and go for a new computer.

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