[resolved] Can't get too far past the login screen

[strycat]

I just installed 10.10 on one of my home boxes. Everything seemed to go smoothly.

Now I'm at the login screen. I enter my username and password. It starts to bring up KDE. The harddrive icon becomes fully visible and in focus but before any of the others come into focus it pops back to the login screen.

I can't get it to do anything else (unless i give it the wrong password and then it sits for a moment and then back to the login).

I tried to get to a console with Ctrl-Alt-F1 (actually tried all the Fx keys) but the best I get is a warped view of the background image.

Is there anything I can do? Someone please help.


UPDATE: so I broke out an old knoppix cd and managed to edit the grub configuration to show me the boot menu. I booted into the choice named recovery. I updated all the packages and rebooted. Still no luck. I went back to the recovery and dropped to a root shell and did a "startx" It started but froze when the wrench icon came into focus. I'm not sure that's progress or not.

[Guest]

Re: Can't get too far past the login screen

> Now I'm at the login screen. I enter my username and password. It starts to
> bring up KDE. The harddrive icon becomes fully visible and in focus but
> before any of the others come into focus it pops back to the login screen.

We have exactly the same problem with 10.10. I tried falling back to Kubuntu 10.04 on this machine and it behaves the same. Home directory is on a 2nd drive so we just do full installs, since *buntu upgrades hardly ever work correctly. Incidentally, booting 10.x off the live CD fails in the same way.

The original post was, um, a bit short on detail, so I'll describe our problem child. System is an AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 2800+. On-board Video is a VIA K8M800. Generic external monitor.

There are numerous errors in Xorg.0.log and in .xsession-errors, but they do not point directly to the problem. The truth is revealed in kdm.log:

X.Org X Server 1.7.6
Release Date: 2010-03-17
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-27-server i686 Ubuntu
Current Operating System: Linux daroo 2.6.32-25-generic-pae #45-Ubuntu SMP Sat Oct 16 21:01:33 UTC 2010 i686
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-25-generic-pae root=UUID=69a9b55c-0c50-4096-959a-2cdabd5d9b86 ro quiet
splash
Build Date: 21 July 2010 12:47:34PM
xorg-server 2:1.7.6-2ubuntu7.3 (For technical support please see http://www.ubuntu.com/support)
Current version of pixman: 0.16.4
Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
(++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Fri Nov 12 21:57:23 2010
(==) Using config directory: "/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d"
Fulfilled via DRI at 20976640
Freed 20976640 (pool 2)
QFont::fromString: Invalid description 'Serif,20,5,0,50,0'
QFont::fromString: Invalid description 'Sans Serif,10,5,0,50,0'
QFont::fromString: Invalid description 'Sans Serif,10,5,0,75,0'
QInotifyFileSystemWatcherEngine::addPaths: inotify_add_watch failed: No such file or directory
QFileSystemWatcher: failed to add paths: /tmp/1578718506/.config/ibus/bus
Bus:pen: Can not get ibus-daemon's address.
IBusInputContext::createInputContext: no connection to ibus-daemon
QThread::wait: Thread tried to wait on itself
QThread: Destroyed while thread is still running
KCrash: Application 'kdmgreet' crashing...
Fatal Error: Accessed global static 'KGlobalPrivate *globalData()' after destruction. Defined at ../../kdecore/kernel/kglob
al.cpp:116
Unable to start Dr. Konqi
Freed 20976640 (pool 1)
error setting MTRR (base = 0xf0000000, size = 0x04000000, type = 1) Inappropriate ioctl for device (25)
ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log

kdmgreet has a use-after-free bug! Watch for a bug filing appearing soon at a bug tracker site near you.

[sithlord48]

Re: Can't get too far past the login screen

you might have a full drive.(or /home partition) check w/ df -h in one of your tty sessions or by using a "fail save" session from the session menu. try to log in. if you drive is full you will have issues logging in, if not perhpas your /home is not writeable.

[Guest]

Re: Can't get too far past the login screen

I can assure you it's nothing that simple nor obvious. Had you read the description carefully you would have noticed that it's failing before we've had a chance to login and mount the second drive, which btw has about 60 Gig free. The first drive is 30G and so /home would still be huge after all of kubuntu was installed.

This was a vanilla installation of Kubuntu, both 10.04 and 10.10. The bug is in kdm. We have given up on Kubuntu and just installed regular Ubuntu (Gnome), it works just fine.

End of thread. Nothing more to see here, folks. Please move along.

[dibl]

Re: Can't get too far past the login screen

It appears to be a video/GPU-related bug, with some history:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...us/+bug/423525

and

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...1462745&page=2

I see a couple of possible solutions in the Ubuntu forums post, although buying a new Nvidia card may not be everyone's idea of a "solution". But the fix on post #18 would be easy to try -- you might need to install nano while in a tty login, to give yourself a text editor.

[strycat]

Re: Can't get too far past the login screen

The solution was found over at Kde Forum It is apparently a KDE issue and is solved by doing the following command:

kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key Enabled --type bool false

[Snowhog]

Re: [resolved] Can't get too far past the login screen

From your post on KDE CF, and Hans reply:

kwin(1596) KWin::CompositingPrefs::detectDriverAndVersion: GL vendor is "VIA Technology"
kwin(1596) KWin::CompositingPrefs::detectDriverAndVersion: GL renderer is "Mesa DRI UniChrome (KM400) 20060710 x86/MMX+/3DNow!+/SSE"
kwin(1596) KWin::CompositingPrefs::detectDriverAndVersion: GL version is "1.2 Mesa 7.9-devel"
kwin(1596) KWin::CompositingPrefs::detectDriverAndVersion: Detected driver "unknown" , version ""
kdeinit4: Fatal IO error: client killed
kdeinit4: sending SIGHUP to children.
klauncher: Exiting on signal 1

and bcooksley's comment:

This is probably because VIA graphics are not too well supported on Linux. I'm surprised the driver is even offering Direct Rendering....

in which was suggested the kwriteconfig command you executed.

VIA Technology graphics are at the best, problematic on Linux. I glad that you got a solution and are able to actually boot into a desktop. Of course, without direct rendering/compositing, you won't enjoy the 3-D effects.

Is your PC a desktop rig? Are the graphics an on-board chip, or an actual graphics card that could be replaced?

Also, you should pop back over to KDE CF and post a reply to your thread letting bcooksley know that the suggested command fixed your problem.