[SOLVED] keep getting login screen

[stigman]

OS version 10.10, when I try to login I enter userid and password and a window flashes quickly in the upper left hand corner and the login prompt reappears. I'm able to login using grub and recovery mode to get to command prompt. I searched the forum and here is what I've tried so far that has not worked.
1. login, type the suggested following sudo apt-get update<cr>sudo apt-get dist-upgrade<cr> -- no change
2. renamed my .kde folder to .kde.old, rebooted window popped up that it could write to a dir .kde/shared/... and no change
3. renamed me .Xauthority to old.Xauthority and .ICEauthority to old.ICEauthority -- no change
4. checked my disk space, plenty 31% used on /dev/sda1, 150GB still left, less than 1% on all other mounts

This was not after a major install, I might have done an update. Computer lost power at some point. It was running and next time I went back to it, it was off. This happened when trying to boot back up. Any help would be appreciated.

[toad]

Re: keep getting login screen

If my memory serves me well you have to select the appropriate session in KDM (KDE plasma-session or some such). However, the fact that you apparently cannot write to your home directory suggests that you inadvertently changed permissions.

[ubuntuku]

Re: keep getting login screen

I believe this is a display driver problem, just install the previous working graphics driver to fix it.

[dibl]

Re: keep getting login screen

ubuntuku may be correct -- reinstall the video driver, if you are using a proprietary driver.

2. renamed my .kde folder to .kde.old, rebooted window popped up that it could write to a dir .kde/shared/... and no change

If it's not the video driver, the above error is saying "there's no .kde directory, and one was not created upon login." That's not good. Maybe (at root prompt in recovery mode) try:

#apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

#apt-get install --reinstall kdm

#apt-get install --reinstall kde-full

#apt-get install --reinstall plasma-desktop

Maybe that will help.

[toad]

Re: keep getting login screen

Ooops, stick with the advice given by folks running Kubuntu - my experience was with Arch :P

[stigman]

Re: keep getting login screen

got it fixed. A few things that I forgot to mention in my post was that when I moved the .kde folder, a new .kde folder was created but had an error on bootup when kde was trying to write to the shared folder that was owned by my userid. Not sure why. Also in the login screen option drop down, only default and failsafe existed which just brought me back to the login. The KDE option was missing.

My fix used dibl's reinstall approach and I'm back in business. I suspect I could have fixed whatever was not allowing kde to write to the shared folder to fix it.

thanks.