Desktop Environment Login Failure

[battlestarjesus]

OK, so I have been using Linux for about 6 months. I'm not a complete noob, but when I hit a brick wall, I hit a brick wall. I have been talking up Linux-Ubuntu-Kubuntu a lot with people who are contemplating trying a flavour of Linux. As a result people have been asking me questions about all sorts of uses and possible applications. Therefore, I have been downloading and installing many different applications using the Synaptic Package Manager, Adept Manager and Add/Remove Programs. I have installed a lot, messed with many different settings, and mainly used myself as a guinea pig to see how much abuse, punishment, and neglect an install of Kubuntu can take before something either eliminates its functional operation or interfears with the systems nominal performance. I'm doing this in preparation to learn its limits, and acquire knowledge to trouble shoot other people's complications in the event that they encounter what I have already experienced.

Now that the stage is set I will explain my current situation. I am not able to login to the GUI desktop environment. I initially installed Ubuntu and migrated to Kubuntu. I have KDE and GNOME both installed, and neither respond positively. When I login, I am immediately logged out. I can login under failsafe mode, but I do not have technical knowledge to troubleshoot the issue. I do not know where to do next. I do not know what is causing this to happen.

If any of you Linux gurus have technical suggestions, all advice you contribute will be appreciated.

Thanks to all You who support the forums!

[dibl]

Re: Desktop Environment Login Failure

I have been downloading and installing many different applications using the Synaptic Package Manager, Adept Manager and Add/Remove Programs. I have installed a lot, messed with many different settings, and mainly used myself as a guinea pig to see how much abuse, punishment, and neglect an install of Kubuntu can take before something either eliminates its functional operation or interfears with the systems nominal performance.

You are a person after my own heart! You're just about a year behind me, that's all.

OK, I'm far from any kind of guru, but I'd like to see you figure this one out. Possibly you have borked up your system so bad with all the experimental stuff that you'll have to reinstall, but maybe not. Possibly you've just borked the X server.

Can you boot Recovery Mode and log in? If "yes", then you are still a legal user with a valid password. If that's the case, try running the X server configuration script

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

When it is finished, it will dump you back to a command line. You can test it by entering

startx

but since you are still in the Recovery Mode (or "root") login session, don't do anything further. Shutdown the system with

sudo shutdown now -r

and try a normal login. It should work. Then if you're running a proprietary video driver you'll have to reinstall that to get back to a pretty GUI.

[battlestarjesus]

Re: Desktop Environment Login Failure

When you ask,

Can you boot Recovery Mode and log in?

do you mean something different than to login using the failsafe session type? I can login under the failsafe session type and I get a terminal. I do not know what you mean by

boot Recovery Mode

After loging in under failsafe session type, from the GUI login screen, I ran the X server configuration script using the code you provided, restarted the machine, and returned to the login screen. Unfortunately that did not resolve the configuration conflict, as a GUI desktop is still not able to sustain a viable login attempt.

I may not have done everything correctly in the the X server configuration script. Is there a tutorial anywhere that you know of?

Two specific software installs and configuration settings I manipulated when I was able to login to the GUI was Emerald and Beryl. I recognize, if I am not mistaken, it could be possible that Emerald and or Beryl could cause this problem? How can I uninstall Emerald and Beryl from the terminal?

[dibl]

Re: Desktop Environment Login Failure

Yeah, Beryl could maybe bork up your X server.

What is your graphics chip -- what video driver were you using?

[battlestarjesus]

Re: Desktop Environment Login Failure

The graphics hardware is Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with 8MB-128MB
I believe the machine is configured to use the restricted driver. Unfortunately the accuracy of this statement is at most 50% less than 100%. What can I do to know exactly what graphics driver the machine is configured to use?

The hardware in service is the Toshiba Satellite® U205-S5002 notebook. http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/...s5002_redirect
http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/cont...U205-S5002.pdf

[opie]

Re: Desktop Environment Login Failure

If I'm not mistaken this sounds very much like a problem dibl is helping with in another thread where the hard drive was full.
Especially if you tried to set up different root and home partitions and, given that you say you have been installing a lot of packages, you might want to read that thread.

In both cases the user was able to get a graphical login screen to appear but could never get the desktop to load. In both cases recovery mode was usable and passwords appeared to be ok.

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3087872.0

[dibl]

Re: Desktop Environment Login Failure

@opie I was thinking the same thing.

@battleguy, "Recovery Mode" = "Failsafe Mode", I guess -- on your main boot menu you normally have 2 versions of the same kernel, the top one boots into the KDE GUI, and the second one boots you into a root prompt -- that's what I call "Recovery Mode".

So, is it possible that your experimentation has led to a full root filesystem? Here's how to take a quick look at the top directories:

sudo du -sh /*

A different view of utilization by partition is given when you do

df -h

Do these checks and then advise if it all looks fine, or if there's a problem with a full filesystem.