KDM crashes - cannot login (Bug 216627 ?)

[Goldfinger]

The problem from the user's point of view:

Bootup from grub menu to KDM login screen occurs normally.
Once at the login screen though, mouse and keyboard do not work.

What seems to be happening is that KDM goes into a loop logging massive amounts of data to
/var/log/kdm.log. Within a few minutes the root partition is full.

The file /var/log/kdm.log contains lines like the following:

KConfigIni: In file /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-22-generic line 8243: "Invalid entry (missing '=')
KConfigIni: In file /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-22-generic line 8244: "Invalid entry (missing 'e')

That's all KDM logs until it fills up a 2Gb partition

The only way to shutdown the laptop is to press power off button.

The current workaround is to disable booting to KDM and instead boot to a console and login from
there + startx. Everything is just fine apart from this KDM problem.

However this is not acceptable to that user and she wants things back like before.

The last upgrade was done last week, so it is upto date to that point, and it was working
fine after that. This problem appeared suddenly after a reboot.

All log files in /var/log were checked, including Xorg.0.log, and there are NO errors indicated,
except in kdm.log.

This is a stock full install of Kubuntu Lucid with the following changes done after the install via synaptic:

- removed bluez stuff
- removed openoffice which caused uno runtime libraries to be removed as well
- removed unrequired fonts

Again note that this machine was running fine for about 2 months since the installation.

Video: nvidia
CPU: AMD athlon 64 dual core TK-53
Kubuntu version: 10.04 x64

I found the same bug reported on 2009-11-29, refer to the following:

http://old.nabble.com/-Bug-216627--N...d26560873.html

but no fix was mentioned.

TIA for any help.

[dibl]

Re: KDM crashes - cannot login (Bug 216627 ?)

This might be a version of the old "login loops but can't login" issue. Try (from a console login) deleting the .ICEauthority and .Xauthority files from the user's home directory, and then have her try a normal login. If that works, then you'll know that, somehow, a graphical package was run as "sudo" and overwrote the permissions in the user's home directory. That's something to be avoided.

[Goldfinger]

Re: KDM crashes - cannot login (Bug 216627 ?)

dibl:

Thanks for the suggestion - we tried it but deleting .ICEauthority and .Xauthority files did not fix problem.
BTW the permissions of those files were / are 600 & owned by user.

As well, reinstalled 'kdm' but problem persists. I took a look at all config files kdm uses, but could not
determine anything useful. Something is telling kdm to read files in '/' as config files!

Any idea what is the chain of events leading up to kdm being launched?

G.

[dibl]

Re: KDM crashes - cannot login (Bug 216627 ?)

AFAIK, KDM should call the /home/user/.kde/share/config folder of whichever user is logging in.

Try renaming the user's .kde folder to .kde_bak, then have her log in again. The .kde folder should be automatically respawned.

[Goldfinger]

Re: KDM crashes - cannot login (Bug 216627 ?)

AFAIK, KDM should call the /home/user/.kde/share/config folder of whichever user is logging in.

Try renaming the user's .kde folder to .kde_bak, then have her log in again. The .kde folder should be automatically respawned.

Ok will try that, however remember the KDM loop occurs before the user has had a chance to login.

Have already reinstalled KDM, any ideas as to what else I should reinstall to try to fix this?