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.

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.

Code:

$ 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!

-- 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