KDE cannot start new sessions for any user but root

[lavaman094]

This is a hard drive install of 9/5/03 3.2. I have apt-get upgraded everything. Everything works, then suddenly something breaks somehow:

I am using KDE and I have a couple users. Today I tried to login to one of the accounts, and the screen went blank and it clicked and then it came back to the KDM login screen.

I deleted that user and added it again. Tried logging in, but no luck...same thing.

I tried the other user, and couldn't login to that user either.

Root is the only user who can login to KDM.

[rickenbacherus]

Try this: log in as root then issue:

passwd <username>

Set the password and then try to log in as user. Post back with results please.

[lavaman094]

Try this: log in as root then issue:

passwd [username]

Set the password and then try to log in as user. Post back with results please.

Did this before, and did it again, no luck. If there is a password mismatch, KDM says "Failed", but it does not. The screen goes blank and then KDM boots back up and I see the grey background and then the login box and the nice background I selected.

[lavaman094]

Hmm....to try to isolate the problem, I tried logging in as another user from Konsole. I've had no problem logging in as root using SSH but I haven't tried logging in as another user.

I do "su [username]" at the root prompt. I've tried it with all the of the users, and it says the same thing:

bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
bash: /dev/null: Permission denied

This continues to be output continuously and I have to CONTROL+C.

What is su doing that it's interacting with /dev/null?

[lavaman094]

hmm....after control+C I get:

bash-2.05b$

I then thought to do a "whoami", which said "guest2", which is the user I did su to. Something is messed up....

[lavaman094]

Oh.......a couple days ago, I remember, I did this:

touch f.mp3
mv f.mp3 /dev/null
OVERWRITE? Y

I thought that the .mp3 would be moved to /dev/null and disappear, so the OVERWRITE question made no sense, but I replaced my block device mystical /null with an empty file. Login pipes pam output to /dev/null, and it was saying permission denied because the file I created f.mp3 did not have group write or something as the block device did.

Luckily I had backed up my home dir and I just reinstalled off the CD. I did not believe it but when I restored my home dir all my prefs were back. A manual apt-get upgrade is still required, but that's pretty impressive.

[Stephen]

Luckily I had backed up my home dir and I just reinstalled off the CD. I did not believe it but when I restored my home dir all my prefs were back. A manual apt-get upgrade is still required, but that's pretty impressive.

LOL! That's pretty good never heard that before, a couple of other things you may want to backup the files you make changes to in the /etc directory a new kernel and header packages if you compiled them and dpkg --get-selections > selections.txt to get your installed packages then if you ever restore again dpkg --set-selections < selections.txt then dselect update and finally apt-get dselect-upgrade will upgrade using the restored package list giving you the same packages as before the re-install then restore the /etc config files and you have your system back.