Hi,

I am a novice to linux.
I am currently using Suse.
I have this weird problem since yesterday.
I am not able to get past login.
when I try to login in any sessios(GNOME,KDE,Default..), a message box pops up, and the message reads something like this,

You seesion Lasted for less than 10 secs.if ypou have not logged out yourself, this might be an installation problem or the disk is out of memory.
Try logging in one of the failsafe sessions and fix the problems
View the log file for details.

But when I click the view button no detail or no message is displayed.

This problem started since yesterday ,when my system admin, changed my mouse without logging off the session, and this he said was a plug & play mouse and needs no rebbot.At the same time I was trying to play some music, but I was getting a error message, something like this,

OSS dev/dsp already in use.

After this booted the system , and this loging problem started siince then.


Whwn i browsed throught posts in this forum , i found that user had similar problems with ubuntu, and the people who were ready to reply had a few questions, to which I will also answer,

1.This is the problem , if i try to login as any use ,any session except, failsafe(I am using GNOME).
2.My machine is dual boot win 2000 and Novell Suse.


I am need of urgent descriptive solution for this problem, as my project , on linux is to be started next week, and I am the sole concern for all the set up.


Please assist me ASAP,

Thanks in Advance,

Hello again - this is a *much* better post than your first one. Thank you!

My original advice still stands: I honestly believe you would be much better off if you could find somebody experienced to help you troubleshoot this problem.

You might also wish to consider re-installing Linux. It sounds like it's a fresh install (i.e. there's probably no significant data on the system yet); SuSE installation is relatively quick and straightforward, and it's a useful experience for any Linux user.

Having said that, it sounds like some X Windows/desktop related file became corrupted. Here are two relevant links:

http://www.mail-archive.com/psyche-l.../msg10459.html

http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Li...3-05/0241.html

If you want to try troubleshooting, you definitely want to do it from the command line (since you'll effectively be debugging X windows itself). You can do this by typing <Clt-Alt-F1>, <Ctl-Alt-F2>, etc, etc. This lets you log in to "Virtual console 1", Virtual console 2", etc.

Once logged in (as "root"), you can view the SuSE 9.3 X windows error log with this command:

less /var/log/Xorg.0.log

You can "cd" to your user directory with this command:

cd ~MYUSERNAME (substitute your actual user name):

Finally, you can view the files and directories in your home directory, sorted by date, with this command:

cd ~MYUSERNAME
ls -lat | less

Good luck .. PSM