After a crash I cannot log in to my devuan box. SDDM simply returns me to the login screen. Slim puts up a message "Failed to execute login command."
I can log in via one of the text terminals, both as myself and as root.
There are a lot of questions out there about this problem but, surprisingly (?) none related to Debian/Devuan that I could find.

Urgent help appreciated as, stupidly, my backups are out dated and 20 miles away so among other things, I cannot access my mail which has a securely generated password, saved by firefox and only on that machine.

Thanks in advance.

What happens if you use the startx command from the console?

Thanks for the reply.

Trying to use startx:
2 message lines:
one points me to the log file, the other reports the config directory.

The log file lists errors. The first is "dbus-core error connecting to system bus (and more)
Then ther are others about /dev/event8, xf86OpenSeriqal and power button and screensaver.

I cannot copy/paste betwen the computers I am using plus whenever I switch using my kvm switch I get a raft of messages which scrool the interesting stuff off the screen!

Does this help?

D

No, that's beyond me, but it's a good informative reply. There should be enough info in there for someone here to be able to help you.

Could you verify if dbus is running, as root:

if not try starting it with

... and try starting SDDM (or slim) with its full path and not just startx.