Logging into 13.04 proceeds to execute but then loops back to login screen.

[PJJ]

XP messed up my partition table. Restored and correctly seen by XP. Not so with Linux. Kubuntu 13.04 insists that there are no partitions on the harddrive at all. XP sees the correct number of 5 (one is swap).

There are some error messages displayed when login is executing. But they pass too fast to read. Something related to apparmor.

Since I managed earlier today to get a command line with network support (if I could only remember how I did that), I updated 13.04 to the latest version. Maybe I could also re-install apparmor or whatever else is missing - provided I knew what could cause the error.

Problem in short:

I get to 13.04 from grub.
Login screen displayed.
Login accepted.
Looping to black screen with text and back to login.

Does anyone know how to resolve this, please?

[vinnywright]

try this ,,,,,,at the login screen press ctrl+alt+F6 ,,,,,you should get switched to a tty ,,,,,if you can login hear do this ,,,

rm -rf ~/.Xauthority

type "exit" and hit enter to log out of the tty ,,,,,press ctrl+alt+F7 and you should be back at the login screen ,,,,,,try to login agin.

VINNY

[PJJ]

Thank you, vinnywright.
I did what you suggested. No changes other then it takes a little longer to loop back to login screen takes longer to re-appear. Some messages displayed.
I will try to get at the logs and look for any messages. Saw something about xServer.

Any other ideas - anyone?

Or do you want me to continue to run on XP forever?
Please.

[PJJ]

No takers?
Well, Windows XP sees all partitions like this:
sda1 50 Gb
sda2 23GB
sda3 Windows NTFS, XP 22
sda4 W95Extended LBA size 1
sda5 swap 636 MB

testdisk sees almost identical partitions.
fdisk also names partitions correctly.

Kubuntu 13.03 partition manager and gparted see:

one drive 100 GB all grayed out.

Recovery console allows some work but does not allow me to rid the installation of bad files and directories. RO file system only!!!

fsck (fsck.msdos -aw /dev/sda) finds and wants to fix one error - or two.
Same for dev/sda1.

Additional error:
No space left on device.
/var/cache/apt/archives does not have space to dpkg (which is necessary because dpkg was stopped while still working) according to error message.
/archives has sub-directory and two files that are extremely large. Impossible to erase because RO file system.

By the way: Grub presents all available OS choices at startup correctly.

So: now what?

[PJJ]

SOLVED - sort of.
I found the root to this problem. Using the suggestion made by Snowhog I managed to restore the partition table to some extent. Unfortunately, Linux still does not see it. fdisk, testdisk and Windows Partition Manager all do see the correct partition table now.

What then caused the original problem?

Answer: While updating the OS on command line I ran out of space on the partition!!!
The update stopped in mid-stream. And so did the later use of dpkg --configure -a.
Leaving that partition in an unusable state - until I can manage to erase the offending files in .Trash.

That is an entirely new challenge. I will start a new thread about it.