Lost power! Now users are locked out.

[RobertB]

I've installed Knoppix to the hard drive -- and I'd just gotten my wife convinced that Linux wasn't so bad. In fact, she just beat level 100 on Frozen Bubble, her "killer app". I was adjusting my Knoppix box's date/time settings, and I think I had just hit "ok" when poof! The circuit breaker tripped and I lost power.

When I brought the box back up, fsck reported problems that couldn't be fixed automatically. I'm a newbie, so I did what it said -- ran fsck without any options and answered "y" to all the errors it reported. I had to do this twice before Linux would stop complaining.

Now, root works fine, but all other logins appear to be out of commission.

I'm running KDE, and when I log in as anything but root, the system grinds around for a while and then goes right back to the login selection dialog. I even created a new user... same result.

Any suggestions for getting back the lost users? I'd rather the rest of the family not log in as root to play Frozen Bubble...

[baldyeti]

Can you login using those accounts from a console session (say Ctl-Alt-F4) ? If yes, then the accounts/passwords should be OK. It might just be KDE's setttings that were corrupted. I'd then suggest renaming the .kde and .kde2 directories to something else, and on the next graphical login, a default KDE profile should be created for said user. Good luck.

[Dave_Bechtel]

--Why in the world did you pick a non-journalled filesystem? Find the frozen-bubble high score file, back it up, then:

o Reinstall the system afresh, to an ext3 or reiserfs filesystem

o Restore the frozen-bubble highscore file so your wife doesn't KILL you

o Once you have the system back up and working right, BACK IT UP.

o Optional, but highly recommended: Buy a UPS.

o Sorry, I looked around my system a bit but I don't know what the FB highscore filename is.

I've installed Knoppix to the hard drive -- and I'd just gotten my wife convinced that Linux wasn't so bad. In fact, she just beat level 100 on Frozen Bubble, her "killer app". I was adjusting my Knoppix box's date/time settings, and I think I had just hit "ok" when poof! The circuit breaker tripped and I lost power.

When I brought the box back up, fsck reported problems that couldn't be fixed automatically. I'm a newbie, so I did what it said -- ran fsck without any options and answered "y" to all the errors it reported. I had to do this twice before Linux would stop complaining.

Now, root works fine, but all other logins appear to be out of commission.

I'm running KDE, and when I log in as anything but root, the system grinds around for a while and then goes right back to the login selection dialog. I even created a new user... same result.

Any suggestions for getting back the lost users? I'd rather the rest of the family not log in as root to play Frozen Bubble...

[Cuddles]

Found the Frozen Bubble High Scores:

Inside the /home folder for the user, locate the file: .fbhighscores

thats [dot]FBHighScores - but in lower case.

Each user account that has played Frozen Bubble will have this file to retain the "user" accounts high scores. You want to look in your wife's /home directory for this file, and copy it off, unless you want to have it evaporate, if you decide to go with the ext3 file system.

I agree with Dave on using the ext3 file system, it is set up to keep track of file information, in the case of failure, it has a better chance of avoiding the corruption. I use the ext3 format, and have not had any problems, but then again, I used to live in Tucson, AZ - and lightning hits were common, so I have a UPS on any computer system that I run - its cheap security. IMHO

Cuddles

[baldyeti]

If nothing vital was lost, you don't have to reinstall but you can convert your ext2 filesystem(s) to ext3 with "tunefs -j". Certainly something to consider.

[Dave_Bechtel]

--True, but after a bad fsck like that you never quite know what problems might come up from it. Safer to reinstall, IMHO.

If nothing vital was lost, you don't have to reinstall but you can convert your ext2 filesystem(s) to ext3 with "tunefs -j". Certainly something to consider.

[RobertB]

Thanks for the great info!

Last night, I was able to log in, with KDE, just fine... then things started locking up. After confirming that I could log in to each user without the graphical shell, I rebooted to try again... and finally got to the bottom of the problem.

I made my partitions too small! /home is out of space. When I installed Knoppix to the HD, I didn't realize that I'd have to do some extra work to use different partitions for different parts of Linux. Remember, I'm a total newbie... I didn't even know what /home was until I tried it out (and I'm still figuring it out).

I haven't stored any valuable data (except for the Frozen Bubble high scores -- thanks for the info, I'll save that!), so I'll re-install Knoppix with a more sensible partitioning scheme as described in the "hints and tips" forum.

Thanks a ton! Your assistance made a great birthday present for me.