login failure.

aviel · 01-10-2005, 05:36 AM

Hi there,

Got a serious and strange problem, not sure why:
When I reboot the machine (laptop, HP nx9000, FC3), everything goes fine, and I get the login screen.
When I type in user name and password, “nothing happens” for a long while (3 minutes), and then I'm back to the login screen. This behavior is the same for Gnome and KDE. I CAN get the failsafe console.
Looking for anything suspicious in /var/log/messages and /var/log/Xorg.0 – I see nothing. Update the system (yum update) and rebooting into the newest kernel also didn't help.

Any help? I can't use the computer now!

Any clue where kde keeps it error message? Or any other checks I can do?

Many thanks,
Yuval

rjlee · 01-10-2005, 05:53 AM

First off, I would switch to console mode. As root, type:

Code:

telinit 3

This will get you to a text console that you can log in on as a regular user. Then type

Code:

startx &> startx.log

This will try to start up a window session, as if you had logged in in the GUI. After it fails, you can then use

Code:

less startx.log

to view the contents of the logfile.

When you fix the problem, you can use

Code:

telinit 5

to switch back to runlevel 5.

aviel · 01-11-2005, 01:35 AM

I also found the problem:
Since the DISPLAY variable is not fully set (it shows ":0" only), I entered in /etc/profile the line:

Code:

export DISPLAY=lcnpc.epfl.ch:0.0

For reason unclear to me - this confused the KDE.
Here is a log file:

Code:

lcnpc:~ # startkde &> startkde.log
lcnpc:~ # cat startkde.log
xsetroot:  unable to open display 'lcnpc.epfl.ch:0.0'
xset:  unable to open display "lcnpc.epfl.ch:0.0"
xset:  unable to open display "lcnpc.epfl.ch:0.0"
xsetroot:  unable to open display 'lcnpc.epfl.ch:0.0'
startkde: Starting up...
ksplash: cannot connect to X server lcnpc.epfl.ch:0.0
kded: cannot connect to X server lcnpc.epfl.ch:0.0
DCOP aborting call from 'anonymous-3674' to 'kded'
kdeinit: Can't connect to the X Server.
kdeinit: Might not terminate at end of session.
kcminit: cannot connect to X server lcnpc.epfl.ch:0.0
knotify: cannot connect to X server lcnpc.epfl.ch:0.0
DCOP aborting call from 'anonymous-3677' to 'knotify'
ksmserver: cannot connect to X server lcnpc.epfl.ch:0.0
startkde: Shutting down...
klauncher: Exiting on signal 1
startkde: Running shutdown scripts...
startkde: Done.
lcnpc:~ #

Currently, when I ssh, the remote computer cannot open the X display since the DISPLAY variable is not set properly.
Any idea what should I do in order to set the DISPLAY variable properly? (Without trashing the computer

)

rjlee · 01-11-2005, 03:15 AM

You could try DISPLAY=:0.0 or DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0.0.

I'm guessing the first one, because then it can figure out the host to use for itself.