Help (cannot log in)

[chosun]

Hi, getting right to it, i can no longer log in. the laptop boots up fine and gets to the login screen. i tried with both my user account and root account. everytime the same thing happens. i type in the correct password (it tells me if its incorrect) and it starts to log in, then after about 5 seconds the screen goes back to the pre-log in screen and asks me for my password again. thats as far as i can get. any information or help at all would be great .running Fedora 16 KDE

---------- Post added at 10:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:37 PM ----------

http://youtu.be/SteNCtrg5ZM - video of what im experiencing.

[stevea]

You can't login as root on some of the GUI greeters.
Likely something is wrong withthe GUI startup.

You might try using that select session tab and the bottom and choose another session type (if insstalled).

But do go to a virtual terminal and try to start a session. If it fails you'll see some messages.
To do this ...
<ctrl>+<alt>+f4
login as your user (not root) at the B&W text prompt.
After login try this command
startx -- :2
That *should* start your default session, but I expect it will fail and give some error message(s).

[ozjd]

The session menu in KDE has a second option to log which gives you a basic session with no effects or any of our autostarted applications. Try that.

[chosun]

Stevea thanks for the info. Here's what I got. http://i47.tinypic.com/wim5pi.jpg computers sure are fussy sometimes. Ha.

Ozjd thanks for the reply. All of the secondary boot options have not helped me. They all end up doing the same thing. :-( the only one that works is the failsafe but that's pretty much the ctrl alt f4. Still no gui

[chosun]

Super ultra mega hopeful Bump?

---------- Post added at 09:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:52 PM ----------

After waiting ten minutes (or what it felt like),I got an error message.
Xinit: server error
Xauth: error in locking authority file /home/paradox/.Xauthority

[Dan]

Hmmm.

Just throwing up a wild shot in the dark here, but ...

Catch the boot at grub, and edit the kernel line by appending a space then a "3" to the kernel line. Then press F10 to boot.

Once it boots to a command prompt, log in using your user name, and password. (whilst entering the password, you will get no indication of what you type, so be careful you don't fat finger the password.)

If it lets you log in, then type "startx" at the command prompt. Hit enter, and watch for error messages.

[DBelton]

One of the few times I have seen that particular message was when the SELinux context got messed up for some files in the users home directory.

The SELinux context should be system_u:object_r:xauth_home_t:s0 for the ~/.Xauthority file.


Try relabelling the files in your home folder and see if that makes a difference. (Won't hurt anything even if this isn't your problem.)

as root user run:

restorecon -R -v /home/paradox

[chosun]

Well dbelton I ran the command and had my hopes up. But cam out unsuccessful. I have an error I didn't see before. When I run startx I get xinit: unable to connect to x server connection refused and invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 keyxinit:giving up

---------- Post added at 11:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:27 PM ----------

Dan what does adding 3 do to the boot process?

[Dan]

It starts the system in run level 3, which is everything except the GUI. (x server) Some SELinux problems with GDM can be temporarily circumvented that way.

[chosun]

Isn't that kind of the same as pressing ctrl alt F4 at the login screen?

[hmmsjan]

Go with CTRL-ALT-F4 or boot option 3 to a terminal and login as root
Add a temporary user with "/usr/sbin/useradd testuser", followed by "passwd testuser" to set a password.
If you can login as testuser, then the problem should be in your home directory.
The error messages point into a home directory problem.
Either some permission is wrong or there is a Selinux issue.
And start with deleting the .Xauthority file, if any, could have wrong owner/permission.


Good luck

[chosun]

Cannot login as test user. Not because it won't let me log in. But it will let me log in but the same problem persists.

---------- Post added at 08:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:58 PM ----------

It gets to here before it brings me back to the login screen. http://oi47.tinypic.com/23gy44i.jpg

[Dan]

Hmmm. It kinda sounds like the system has enough serious issues that it may prove better and faster to boot into a liveCD (I recommend Puppy 5.28) and rescue any needed data files to an attached (isolate-able) storage drive, then after shutting down and disconnecting the back-up storage drive, do a clean re-install of F16.

[chosun]

I'm leaning towards that but m reluctant to do so. lol

[Dan]

Well ... that's part of the beauty of Linux and fedora. When you break it ... you get to keep all the pieces. <....>