Help Please! Intrepid - Lost Login Window

[falviani]

Hello,

I am having serious problems with my Intrepid (8.10) system after an attempt to install a 2nd hard disk went terribly wrong (installing the ext3 filesystem on the disk did not complete - I have disconnected the drive). I have a number of files I'd like to recover, after which I'm OK with reinstalling Kubuntu if necessary.

I have searched several forums, including this one, but found nothing that seemed to apply.

The motherboard is an ASUS X8V-X with a dual-core processor, ATI AGP video card with the stock Kubuntu drivers. I'm running KDE 4.2.2, fully patched.

After rebooting, I get to the default 8.10 desktop but get no login window. Mouse movement is jerky as if the processor is 100% occupied with other processes. I have done the following:

1) get into the grub bootup menu and choose the latest kernel in rescue mode.
2) fschk the file system (it's OK)
3) clean to try and reclaim space (in case an error log has totally occupied the disk)
4) xfix to try and fix an XORG problems.

It seems to me I need to boot into a root console at this point to try and fix a config file, but I don't know what would need fixing.

Can anybody suggest what I should be doing next? While I usually don't operate in console mode, I'm not particularly afraid of it.

Thanks in advance,
Frank Alviani

[dibl]

Re: Help Please! Intrepid - Lost Login Window

I have a number of files I'd like to recover, after which I'm OK with reinstalling Kubuntu if necessary.

Just boot a Live CD, mount the Kubuntu partition, and copy off your data files. No need to fix the broken OS, if you plan to reinstall it.

[flarson]

Re: Help Please! Intrepid - Lost Login Window

It looks to me like you have enabled autologin. You are getting the desktop rather than the login screen. That is probably only one issue but it can be dealt with easily and then we can see about resource usage.

If you can manipulate in KDE use System Settings-> Advanced->Login Manager->Convenience and uncheck the "Enable Auto Login" box.

If not from a terminal you can edit /etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc and comment the line (line 252 for me) that says AutoReLogin=true. That would be done something like
sudo nano AutoReLogin=true
or you can use a favorite editor if you have one.

That should get you to a login screen. You may well find that after you login youwill still have the problem of heavy resource usage.

[falviani]

Re: Help Please! Intrepid - Lost Login Window

dibl: Thanks for the reply. I'll see what I have accessible - the files are ISOs of DVDs I have made from shows I've recorded at the family business, and some are quite large, but in a directory shared under Samba. I had planned (once I got in) to copy them to another machine before proceeding further. K3B might not be runnable from a Live CD.

mando_hacker: Thanks for the hint. I did not have autologin turned on, but I will check to see if there might be something obvious in that file.

When I have some results I'll post them here in case they can help somebody else.

-Frank

[falviani]

Re: Help Please! Intrepid - Lost Login Window

Sorry it took a while to reply - my DSL modem melted down and took me offline for a bit.

To shorten a long story, the whole problem seems to have been due to a failing video card. Symptoms got progressively worse (although I did manage to copy files to another machine) and I decided to replace the video card with one I had around after an upgrade to another machine. Things have been rock-solid stable since then.

Moral of the story - sometimes it IS the hardware!

-Frank