Login Broken, system unusable.

[pnunn]

The bleeding edge bites . I just logged off the systme and now, no matter what I try I cant log back in.

gdm works, but as soon as I put my password in, I get the blue screen, then nothing. I can switch to a text console to reboot but thats about it.

I tried moving .kde and .kderc but no change. Also tried apt-get update/upgrade inacase I was missing some files.

Any ideas anyone?

Ta
Peter

[SecretCode]

With the text console you can log in and see all your files I presume? ... since you were able to see and move .kde etc.

It might be worth moving ~/.config and ~/.gtkrc* but I'm not saying it will help.

Are there any interesting messages in ~/.xsession-errors?

It would be useful to see if you can log in to the KDE desktop under another user account ... I don't suppose you have a spare test account already set up?
It is surely possible to create a new user from the command line but I am not sure what the correct command is ... and I'm currently a bit wary of given half-baked advice ... useradd or adduser may be places to start looking, but I don't know if they will create the full KDE environment for the new account (eg by copying skeleton files from the relevant system directory)>

[daihard]

With the text console you can log in and see all your files I presume? ... since you were able to see and move .kde etc.

It might be worth moving ~/.config and ~/.gtkrc* but I'm not saying it will help.

Are there any interesting messages in ~/.xsession-errors?

It would be useful to see if you can log in to the KDE desktop under another user account ... I don't suppose you have a spare test account already set up?
It is surely possible to create a new user from the command line but I am not sure what the correct command is ... and I'm currently a bit wary of given half-baked advice ... useradd or adduser may be places to start looking, but I don't know if they will create the full KDE environment for the new account (eg by copying skeleton files from the relevant system directory)>

sudo useradd -p <password> new_user_id

By default the user directory will be created under /home using the user ID. If your new user ID is "testuser," then the home directory will be /home/testuser.

You may need to manually create the new home directory. I had to when I ran useradd myself.

sudo mkdir /home/new_user_id

Then make sure you change the permissions on the directory as follows:

sudo chown -R new_user_id /home/new_user_id

Once I did all that, I was able to log into KDE using the new user ID. Apparently all the necessary KDE-related files are created at first login.

Hope this helps...

[pnunn]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm sorry to say that I didn't think of that one (wish I had) but because I had to get the system up again as soon as I could I backed up and reinstalled (which took a while).

Back up and running now though, but will remember this in future to give it a go.

Out of interest, the only thing in xsession-errors was complaints about Sonata, which someone on irc said they get all the time regardless.

I'll keep this thread bookmarked though. Hopefully I won't need it.

Peter.

[SecretCode]

Re-installing's always an option! Glad you're back in action.

[daihard]

Re-installing's always an option! Glad you're back in action.

Ditto.