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View Full Version : Cannot login other than root, pls help



bsjawle
03-31-2005, 03:15 AM
After installing Knoppix 3.6 on my laptop, knoppix was working fine till one day I ran out of space .
I created new extended partition on free space using qtparted as I had about 60% disk unused. After that I am not able to login to KDE as normal user. I can login as root and changed password for normal user but when I logout and try logging in using login screen , when I select another user and try logging in, it does something and shows me login screen again.
If I enter wrong password, it immediately says login failed but on correct credentials, keep on getting login screen again and again
Pls. help

mr_ed
03-31-2005, 07:15 AM
What did you do after you created the extended partition? They can't be used by themselves, they have to have logical partitions inside them. Did you make a logical partition, or more than one maybe? Then what did you put on them?

-- Ed

bsjawle
03-31-2005, 07:38 AM
Yes I did create logical partition on extended one. After logging in as root I could mount it as /mnt/hda5 (this was recognised and appeared in /etc/fstab). I have put in some mp3 files there
Thanks,
Bhushan

mr_ed
03-31-2005, 07:54 AM
Hmmmm. What I'm wondering is whether something happened to your home directory /home/username. Root's home directory is /root, so it isn't affected by what goes on in /home.

Could you show us the lines in your /etc/fstab that start with /dev/hd...?

-- Ed

bsjawle
03-31-2005, 10:57 PM
/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda1 none swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 ext2 noauto,users,exec 0 0
Thanks,
Bhushan

mr_ed
04-01-2005, 01:26 AM
Okay, well, so much for an easy answer - or at least, that easy answer. :D It's possible that QTParted stole some of your /home directory to make the new partitions, but it's supposed to be pretty safe.

I think the next thing I'd do is check to make sure your user space is still okay, which would narrow down the possibilities to just losing some setting that affects X or KDE, probably.

Try starting Knoppix in console (non-GUI) mode with the boot parameter (cheatcode) 2. That puts it in run-level 2 instead of the default 5, which is where KDE gets started up automatically.

Log in as user instead of root and look around your home directory. In particular, see what configuration files you have. These are normally hidden by having names that start with a period, so the default ls command doesn't display them.
$ ls -d .* The -d option keeps ls from showing the contents of directories.

-- Ed

bsjawle
04-01-2005, 01:36 AM
Thanks for immediate response, will check that. Also I tried selecting different window manager (IceWM) from GUI login box and was able to login as normal user. Pardon my ignorance but does that mean something with KDE setting is messed up as well.
Thanks,
Bhushan

mr_ed
04-01-2005, 03:22 AM
There are system-wide settings for X stuff and KDE stuff that are stored in other places, and then user settings that are stored in your home directory. So if root can log into KDE and use the same applications as you used to be able to do as user, then the system-wide settings should still be good.

With IceWM working, I'm wondering if it could be a memory problem. How much RAM is installed, and how big is your swap partition - and did you change its size when you repartitioned?

In a situation where memory is marginal, it's theoretically possible that root could still run KDE because its configuration is pretty minimal - by default Knoppix/KDE doesn't want you to run the GUI as root for security reasons - but the user's configuration could be enough to swamp memory and crash KDE.

At least you know that your display manager is working. That's the program that's responsible for putting up the login window. It does almost nothing else to speak of, just being the piece between X and the window manager (like IceWM) or window-manger-plus-kitchen sink (like KDE).

KDE installations use kdm, Gnome installations use gdm, and there's also xdm. But they're all the same size, so there's no reason to think about the display manager any further.

I'm really guessing here, but I'm still making somewhat ed-ucated guesses! :D

-- Ed

bsjawle
04-01-2005, 05:42 AM
Thanks.
I have 128M RAM and 300 M swap space. As far as I remember I did not modify swap space but will double check. Thanks again.
Thanks,
Bhushan

mr_ed
04-01-2005, 08:49 AM
Well ... it sounds like enough RAM and swap. Here's what they say about minimum system requirements on http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-info/index-en.html:


20 MB of RAM for text mode, at least 96 MB for graphics mode with KDE (at least 128 MB of RAM is recommended to use the various office products)
According to that, you should be able to at least get into KDE, though you wouldn't want to run OpenOffice.

-- Ed

bsjawle
04-01-2005, 09:14 AM
What else would you recommend to be checked out
Thanks,
Bhushan

mr_ed
04-01-2005, 10:52 AM
Well, let's see....

I'm really thinking that it's not enough memory to run KDE. It's not that that's a very big possibility, it's just that everything else (that I can think of) looks like such a small possibility.- see if you have the file /home/user/.kderc;
- see if there's lots of stuff in the directory /home/user/.kde;
- boot from the CD and check that the filesystems are okay (but it doesn't work for swap):
$ sudo umount /dev/hda2
$ sudo fsck -c /dev/hda2
$ sudo umount /dev/hda5
$ sudo fsck -c /dev/hda5
Note that you must not run fsck on a mounted filesystem !!! It will try to warn you if you do, but don't do it anyway. :D The -c option makes it check for bad blocks before looking at the filesystem itself. Read $ man fsck to see what it does.

That's really all I can think of for now. I'm sorry that nothing jumps up and has a big neon arrow pointing to itself! For me, anyway.

Let us know what you find.

-- Ed

bsjawle
04-04-2005, 02:48 AM
Thanks .
Will try it out and post the results. I tried one more thing,
1> From login manager selected console login
2> Logged in as normal user
3> Executed startx
This worked !?
Thanks,
Bhushan

mr_ed
04-05-2005, 06:23 AM
Yes, well.... Ahem. (Cough, cough.) Have you seen the latest images from the Cassini spacecraft, orbiting Saturn? :D

When you run startx (a front end for xinit), it gets setup information from .xinitrc or, preferably, .xsession in your home directory. KDE, though, looks to .kde and the subdirectory .kderc.

So maybe it's a hosed configuration after all. Last week something mysteriously happened to my setup for gnome, which a couple of my other Linuxes use. But even Knoppix complains about gnome when it starts KDE!

The universe is a strange and wonderful place. Imagine - methane in the Martian atmosphere! Methane won't persist for more than a few centuries, so something - maybe something alive - produced it not very long ago. :shock:

I suspect that that same something is messing with our config files. After all, scientists have identified 32 meteorites on earth which came from Mars. They could have carried viruses...!

-- Ed

bsjawle
04-09-2005, 04:28 AM
Thanks Mr_Ed

mr_ed
04-09-2005, 05:02 AM
Ummm ... you're welcome! :D Did you find the problem?

-- Ed