I've been searching through forums for going on three hours trying to find a solution to this with no luck, and was hoping someone here might be able to help me. Changes since my last successful boot: 1) I was trying to make my MP3 files that are stored on my Windows desktop accessable to my Linux laptop (I was able to read them through Samba without a problem, but in order to play them, I had to copy and paste them to my laptop's HD). I typed "sudo smbmount //Main/C /mnt/windows" after creating the windows subdirectory under /mnt, as advised by a user on the Ubuntu community forums. 2) I let Adept download the latest updates (language packs from Ubuntu). 3) I moved /usr/src into the folder containing the files for Gnutella which I had just installed, since src appeared to only contain files relating to this program (I very possibly could've over-looked important system files), and moved this directory into /usr/share (I was concerned for a while that this was the problem, but I'm almost certain it's not, as I have since moved src back into /usr, as well as moving src and the gnutella folder to /home/mike/My_Files). I assumed I needed to reboot my system in order for Linux to mount the files from my desktop to my laptop, so I restarted. The load screen came up and everything appeared to load normally (The progress bar filled completely up). Then a blank screen briefly appeared, followed by a loading screen that was "stuck" - the progress bar stayed empty and no information appeared under it; the activity light on my computer was also completely inactive. I tried Ctrl+Alt+F7 to return to the GUI, which did nothing. Then I hit Alt+F1 and logged in. I've tried the following commands and gotten this feedback:

"mike@mikeslaptop:~$ kdeinit
kdeinit: Aborting. $DISPLAY is not set."

"mike@mikeslaptop:~$ kdeinit [after xset]
Link points to "/tmp/ksocket-mike"
kdeinit: Can't connect to the X Server.
kdeinit: Might no terminate at end of session.
Link points to "/tmp/kde-mike"
kded: cannot connect to X server 127.0.0.1:0
DCOP aborting call from 'anonymous-4915' to 'kded'
kded: ERROR: Communication problem with kded, it probably crashed."

"mike@mikeslaptop:~$ startx [with and without "-fullscreen" at the end"
xauth: creating new authority file /home/mike/.serverauth.4794 [This number is different every time I input this command, going up in increments of 21 with each attempt]

giving up.
xinit: Connection refused (errno 111) unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error."

"mike@mikeslaptop:~$ startkde
xsetroot: unable to open display ''
xset: unable to open display ""
xset: unable to open display ""
xsetroot: unable to open display ''
startkde: Starting up...
ksplash: cannot connect to X server
kdeiit: Aborting. $DISPLAY is not set.
Warning: connect () failed: : No such file or directory
ksmserver: cannot connect to X server
ERROR: Couldn't attach to DCOP server!
startkde: Shutting down...
Warning: connect failed: : No such file or directory
Error: Can't contact kdeinit!
startkde: Runnng shutdown scripts...
startkde: Done."

Following the advice given in responses to a few threads that seemed relevant to my situation, I tried the following commands with this feedback:
"mike@mikeslaptop:~$ export DISPLAY="127.0.0.1:0
[no feedback]"

"set DISPLAY=0:0
[no feedback]"

"mike@mikeslaptop:~$ xset -fullscreen
xset: unable to open display """

I'm becoming exceeding frustrated, and am really hoping someone can help me solve this. I haven't ruled out reinstalling Kubuntu as a last resort, but there are a good number of files on my laptop's HD that I'd like to back up beforehand if this is still possible, be it through command lines that will operate K3B or command lines that will copy them to my Windows desktop. My knowledge of Linux in general, and the command line especially, is very minimal, so any help that keeps that in mind (i.e., very specific instructions ) would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,

And welcome to LQ!

I'm moving the post over to the Ubuntu forum. As far as assessing what's going
on goes: have you tried to boot in Ubuntus equivalent of "safe mode" and examined
the logs in /var/log, namely Xorg.0.log ?


Cheers,
Tink

"root@mikeslaptop:~$ /var/log/Xorg.0.log
bash: /var/log/Xorg.0.log: Permission denied"

I thought the sudo prefix was only required when not logged in as root, but I figured I'd try it given the above response.

"root@mikeslaptop:~$ sudo /var/log/Xorg.0.log
sudo: /var/log/Xorg.0.log: command not found"

Thanks anyway, Tinkster.

Following are a few other commands and responses following my logging in as root.

"root@mikeslaptop:~$ startx 0
xauth: creating ew authority file /root/.serverauth.3897

X: warning: process set to priority -1 instead of requested priority 0
giving up
xinit: Connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error."

I've also deleted /mnt/windows, which I thought would unmount it from my system, but when the computer is shutting down, "Unmounting remote filesystems" is still in its list of processes - It completes this process successfully. I then tried remounting //Main/C to /mnt/windows so that I could unmount it using the proper command (umount) - "Could not resolve mount points."

Still haven't made a bit of real progress over the course of 5+ hours. I'm ready to give up. Can anyone tell me how to tell me how to back up /home/Mike/My_Files from the command line? Please keep in mind that I'm a complete newbie, so I would need to know what to type in the command line verbatim as I'm still unfamiliar with 99% of the commands for Terminal. Thanks.

cd /
tar -cvf home.tar home

(Try man tar for explanation)

To restore home directory

tar -xvf home.tar

You don't run the file, you look at it, it's a log file
Check /etc/fstab and make sure you aren't mounting more than one thing to the same place
If you're going to back it up, you may want to compress it too
then to restore it