Alright,

Well, I (stupidly, apparently) deleted the /tmp folder, thinking there was probably just junk temp files in there, and at my next login attempt, couldn't get any graphical display, only command prompt. So I logged in as user and tried "startx". Didn't work. So I tried as root. Still didn't work. So I urpmi'd all the X11 packages. Tried "startx" as root, and got a KDE session. Now my graphical login screen comes up at bootup, but I can only log into a KDE session with "root". If I try to login as user, I get a black screen for a second before being returned to the login screen again. I've tried booting in "failsafe" and trying "startx", but I get:

"command not found"

So I tried "/usr/X11R6/bin/startx" and got:

/usr/X11R6/bin/startx: line 123: xauth: command not found
/usr/X11R6/bin/startx: line 124: xauth: command not found
/usr/X11R6/bin/startx: line 123: xauth: command not found
/usr/X11R6/bin/startx: line 124: xauth: command not found
/usr/X11R6/bin/startx: line 162: xinit: command not found
/usr/X11R6/bin/startx: line 1: xauth: command not found

So I tried "/usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg" and I get a black "x" cursor on a blue background (like it's about to load KDE), but it just hangs there.

So I'd appreciate any help to get my back to logging in as a normal user without reinstalling or anything. This has to be just some stupid little thing, I would think, since I can log in just fine with root.


Thanks in advance.

Okay, so I forgot that when booting "failsafe" I never logged on as me. So I booted "failsafe" to the command prompt, and went:

login:
pat
password: *******

then "startx"

And now I get
/usr/X11R6/bin/startx: line 124: cannot create temp file for here document: Permission denied
/usr/X11R6/bin/startx: line 124: cannot create temp file for here document: Permission denied
Authentication failed - cannot start X server.
Perhaps you do not have console ownership?xinit: Servor error.

So there's another little tidbit.

Hope I can get this worked out.

Okay, so from the same prompt as above I tried "/usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg" and got:

Fatal server error:
Could not create lock file in /tmp/.tx0-lock

Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.X.Org for help.

Sorry for the extra posts, I'm just trying things as the occur to me, and I thought the info could be helpful for anybody who may be interested in helping me

Did you recreate the /tmp folder? Does it have write access for normal users?

Upon my next graphical startup, the /tmp folder had reappeared. It's got a write access for all users, but I think it's only got read access for root.

FIXED!!

Turns out that under permissions for the /tmp folder I checked users can "write entries", but I didn't check "enter" as well. Once I checked that, everything was just dandy. So incase anybody else has a problem such as this, here's your 2 part solution:

A) Don't be an ass and delete your /tmp folder in the first place, and
B) Make sure the permissions are all set correctly so your desktop environment can write to the /tmp folder


Thanks for the advice!