Graphical login not working (after system freeze)

[pwabrahams]

A short time ago I had left my Intrepid system running, and came back to find it frozen. No response to the mouse. So I rebooted and got to the graphical login screen. I logged in (my password was apparently accepted). The screen flashed a couple of times and then I was returned to the same graphical login screen. (I'm posting this from another computer.) I tried renaming both ~/.kde and ~/.kde4, but that made no difference. I can log in to a text terminal, however.

The only other user shown on the graphical login screen is root, and logging in as root is not allowed from there. So I can't just switch to another user.

What can I do to get my system back?

[cantab]

Re: Graphical login not working (after system freeze)

Try

df - h

at the terminal. If your disks are full, that can block logins.

[kyonides]

Re: Graphical login not working (after system freeze)

Just a little correction, it's

df -h

[pwabrahams]

disk space

I did the disk-space check with df. There's plenty of room.

[Teunis]

Re: Graphical login not working (after system freeze)

How about doing a apt-get install, apt-get -f install, to fix broken packages?

And as a next step a reinstall of the desktop,

sudo apt-get install --reinstall kubuntu-desktop

[tomwilms]

Re: Graphical login not working (after system freeze)

I enjoy using Kubuntu, but lately I could not login any more, after a freeze indeed.
I have the same problem: after entering my login name and password the screen turned black and returned to the login screen.
I can do console login, the following commands I found after searching various forums. After ty-ping ‘startx’ I get the following response:
> Warning: Type "ONE_LEVEL" has 1 levels, but <RALT> has 2 symbols
> Ignoring extra symbols
> Errors from xkbcomp are not fatal to the X server
(twice)
When I type ‘sudo startx’ everything works fine.
I tried ‘dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg’ too, but that did not solve anything.
Can anybody explain: i) where and ii) how I can change the <RALT> and iii) what it is used for.

Question: what is the risk/effect of reinstalling of the desktop.

Kind regards,

Tom

[cantab]

Re: Graphical login not working (after system freeze)

When I type ‘sudo startx’ everything works fine.

I seem to recall that being a VERY BAD IDEA. It breaks stuff badly, or at least it used to.

[dhcolesj]

Re: Graphical login not working (after system freeze)

I have seen this before, and it's really not that hard to fix.

First shut down kdm (sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop)
Second: Delete /var/tmp/kdecache-userid; /tmp/ksocket-userid; /tmp/kde-userid
then ~/.kde/cache-nodename; ~/.kde/socket-nodename; ~/.kde/tmp-nodename

Or for good measure you could just clear out the /tmp directory.

then login to the console as yourself, not root, by running startx. If you can get in fine you should be able to restart kdm (sudo /etc/init.d/kdm restart) and login.

If that still doesn't work add a user who can login:
sudo useradd <username>
sudo passwd <username>

and see if you can login.

Deleting the .kde and .kde4 directories from your home dir doesn't delete the directories in /tmp with your ID on them, and KDE will reuse them if they are already there (or so it appeared to me).