Cannot login other than root, pls help

**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):

Code:

$ 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.

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?

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.

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