KDM fail after filled harddrive

[Zwetschge]

Lasst week I installed Kubuntu 12.04 on my shiny new Lenovo W520. It all worked out perfectly fine and I was happy. While I did install from the alternatev CD to have full disk encryption, and thus kept the home directory 'unencrypted', I stuck to the default partitioning and options in general.
Last friday I started a big copy operation, went for lunch, came back, unlocked the screen, noticed issues in Thunderbird(crashed when I tried to open emails), and rebooted. I have convenience login enabled since I enter a long password during boot for the encrypted HD. So I was surprised to end up at the KDM login screen. Entering wrong credentials resulted in the expected error message, but entering correct ones results in KDM trying to log me in apparently, for a split second I see a black screen, then I'm back at the KDM login window. The problem was I accidentally filled /. I deleted 30 gig so theres plenty of disk space again now.

I can switch to console, log in as my user, kill kdm and 'startx' to get KDE up and running. It mostly works. I dont have sound anymore. Kmix only shows 'dummy device'. I cant use the updater. When the notifier shows new updates, and I tell it to update, I'm not asked for a password, instead I get "This operation cannot continue since proper authorization was not provided".

x.org logs show:
klauncher(1743) kdemain: No DBUS session-bus found. Check if you have started the DBUS server.
kdeinit4: Communication error with launcher. Exiting!
kdmgreet(1735)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): KSystemTimeZones: ktimezoned initialize() D-Bus call failed: "Not connected to D-Bus server"

kdmgreet(1735)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): No time zone information obtained from ktimezoned
QInotifyFileSystemWatcherEngine::addPaths: inotify_add_watch failed: No such file or directory
QFileSystemWatcher: failed to add paths: /tmp/0077350107/.config/ibus/bus




Some more info:
driftice@Ghostdive:~$ systemsettings
QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.

me@Ghostdive:~$ qdbus | wc -l
94



My original thread is here:
http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=107784

[Teunis]

You could try to delete (or rename) ~/.kde, at next login a new default one will be created.
You could try to reinstall kubuntu-desktop.

[Zwetschge]

You could try to delete (or rename) ~/.kde, at next login a new default one will be created.
You could try to reinstall kubuntu-desktop.

I'll try renaming it. Lets see....

[Zwetschge]

I'll try renaming it. Lets see....

As expected this didnt change a thing. After all, as I said, logging into KDE works perfectly fine, from the console. Logging into it from the login window(KDM?) doesnt.

[Teunis]

I also run a W520 but have never used disk encryption except Truecrypt on an external data disk.
Because the encryption could mean access via a live CD session is impossible and you only just set this computer up the easiest solution is probably a fresh install.
My suggestion for a reinstall of the desktop is a half-way solution that might or might not get to the damaged parts.
In the mean time trying to rescue the present install is of course a nice challenge when you are into such things.

In your first post you give a list of things that even after the manual login don't work, in your last past you state KDE works perfectly fine.
Now what is it?

Your problem was likely started when the root partition(?) was overfilled and some status files could no longer be updated and seem to remain corrupt even now you have made available plenty of space.
From the first post I glean you did encrypt something but not the home partition
Does that mean only your / is encrypted?
It's probably a good idea to give us the details of your partitioning.

[Zwetschge]

There are some things that dont work after 'manual' login into KDE. Sound doesnt work anymore. Kmix doesnt let me select a master channel but 'dummy device'. While the system settings do show an analog soundcard, that one is greyed out. Starting alsamix from the console, I see all my sound hardware.

I cant use the system updater in KDE. It'll complain about missing auth credentials. I can run apt-get update/upgrade from the console though.

I cant change convenience login in the system settings. I'll get an error 'code 4'

Theres more things I just change change in the system settings anymore.

My partitioning scheme is the default one:
me@Ghostdive:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/Ghostdive-root 143G 95G 42G 70% /
udev 1.9G 4.0K 1.9G 1% /dev
tmpfs 782M 516K 782M 1% /run
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 2.0G 76K 2.0G 1% /run/shm
/dev/sda1 228M 59M 157M 28% /boot


About encryption. When I installed the OS, I selected full disk encryption. I was later asked whether I want to encrypt the home directory too. Since encryption upon encryption may result in a performance impact without further improving the systems security, I didnt select that option.

[Zwetschge]

I'm trying to fix this since Friday, and I'm giving up now. I'll just reinstall, again. I was hoping to find this and maybe submit a bug report, to fix this ridiculuous issue. If Windows 98 had trashed its system because some user filled the hd to the brim, we would have laughed and pointed fingers. Now its the year 2012 and a 'modern' window manager still manages to do just that. I'm not impressed.

[Teunis]

Thanks for your clarification re. the encryption.

Your 'df -h' is not the appropriate tool to display the partition information.
'sudo fdisk -l' should give a better output.
Running the KDE partition manager is another way to be sure you don't miss anything.

I agree with your sentiment that a public-ready DE should have protection against itself and it's operator

[claydoh]

I am making a guess that the problem is involving a crash due to the full disk problem added to having an encrypted disk. I really don't think the desktop environment is the problem. It is the underlying OS that had some failures.

There is supposed to be a full disk warning, but I do not know if it pauses any disk writes when it gives a warning.

I do not know how to fix things, however.

You can try using the grub recovery mode, select root, which will give you a root console where your can check some things, such as having the right groups for your user.


Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk 2

[Zwetschge]

I am making a guess that the problem is involving a crash due to the full disk problem added to having an encrypted disk. I really don't think the desktop environment is the problem. It is the underlying OS that had some failures.

There is supposed to be a full disk warning, but I do not know if it pauses any disk writes when it gives a warning.

I do not know how to fix things, however.

You can try using the grub recovery mode, select root, which will give you a root console where your can check some things, such as having the right groups for your user.


Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk 2

I disagree. The OS booted perfectly fine, and apart from some KDE related tools everythings worked as expected. I didn't need to boot into recovery mode from CD. After all I could just boot the OS and look around. And I'm pretty sure the OS won't do partial writes. Ext3/4 have seen millions of hours of uptime so far, they won't crash easily.

I've reinstalled from scratch yesterday(same config), and everything is up and running once again. Apart from the waste of time, I regret not being able to spot the problem, to submit a bug report. I won't be the only one filling their / by accident. So this issue will probably happen again, to someone else.

@Teunis: Well said. Release-grade software should indeed not just protect itself, but also protect itself from the user

[Frank616]

I won't be the only one filling their / by accident. So this issue will probably happen again, to someone else.

I crammed a full 12.04 installation onto the 4 GB system drive of my Eeepc 901, and it worked. I then tried to update it. The little disk overfilled, and I was hooped, as it did stop the upgrade in mid-process, leaving a big mess. I too tried to delete some files (LO and some other big ones) with the package manager, but it didn't help. I too had to reinstall, but then I removed those big apps before I did the update. Then I was OK.

There is an issue here that should not be. It is rare that anyone comes across it these days, however, as disks now are so big.

Frank.

[claydoh]

Sorry, my point wasn't too clear I guess. The desktop environment has very little to do with disk encryption or writing to disk - the actual OS, the kernel, etc.handles that. Not gaining access to hardware devices (audio) or permissions to manage software (permissions and privileges) is not necessarily from the DE end. That is why I suggested using the recovery mode from the grub boot menu. All it takes is a flipped bit in the wrong place to corrupt a file, then add in the encryption/decryption on the disk plus normal disk writes. I am not saying it is excusable, but that sometimes blame is put in the wrong places (not that we can always know where to do so)



Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk 2

[claydoh]

Also, we get flack for having too much hand holding bloated stuff, and we get flack for not having the hand holding bloated stuff.

Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk 2

[Teunis]

Ah yes, Kernel vs. DE.
The Kernel does Things and the DE tells it what Things to do, like the GUI would.
In the case of a too large copy, possibly caused by a temp file filling all the remaining free space on a system drive/partition causing the system to go into a difficult to repair state it could and should of course be the Kernel that should have prevented this. But it could just as much have been the DE that saved the system from such damage.
For me as a user these two, Kernel and DE, are together just one system.

[steve7233]

I crammed a full 12.04 installation onto the 4 GB system drive of my Eeepc 901, and it worked. I then tried to update it. The little disk overfilled, and I was hooped, as it did stop the upgrade in mid-process, leaving a big mess. I too tried to delete some files (LO and some other big ones) with the package manager, but it didn't help. I too had to reinstall, but then I removed those big apps before I did the update. Then I was OK.

There is an issue here that should not be. It is rare that anyone comes across it these days, however, as disks now are so big.

Frank.

I did exactly the same thing. Its nice to know why my Eee modle 901 is acting weird. I don't want to reinstall since I have an old /home partion and I don't want to lose my other settings Why does the 12.04.1 upgrade do this. I thought the upgrades were supposed to stop if they saw that you will run out of memory before the upgrade finishes. They need to fix this bug before we start woundering if their are Microsoft people working on kubuntu! :eek: