I installed 2008.1 (Mandriva 2008 Spring) three CD set by having it format and install to hda2, which is where Mandriva 2006 used to be (hda1 is boot).

Install went smoothly, and I set up a user. When I try to do anything after logging into that user, however, it throws me back to the log in screen and I have to log in again.

What gives? I can't even open my Home icon on my desktop without being tossed back to a log in screen.

Don't tell me to open a terminal. I tried that. Tossed me back to log in.

Of course, that means I can't su to root either, and I can't log in as root from the jump.

Same behavior in both KDE and GNOME.

Is it my breath?

You should look in /var/log/syslog for error messages. On boot grub normally has the option to boot into safe mode. this will boot to a terminal in single-user mode. with no other information at a guess I would say its a problem with the display manager. If you have both kdm and gdm installed then try changing it. It's set as a variable DISPLAYMANAGER in /etc/sysconfig/desktop.

Also, you can always hit Ctrl-alt-F1 to get a virtual terminal. (F1-F6 are all virtual. X is usually on F7 or F8) After going to a virtual terminal, log in as usual and make your edits. I would try renaming my user kde file to /home/username/.kde.old and allow kde to make a new user file. If it works, it is a setting in the .kde file (gnome, too.)

Thank you both. I had suspected a display problem since my monitor shows a signal-out-of-range error during boot up that it didn't display when Mandriva Free 2006 (2.6.12-12 kernel) was installed.

The monitor is a CTX S961A, and there are no linux drivers for it, so a display issue makes sense.

I'll check it out and report back.

Moxieman

When I installed Mandriva 2008 I had to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and comment out the lines

ModeLine "768x576" 50.00 768 832 846 1000 576 590 595 630
ModeLine "768x576" 63.07 768 800 960 1024 576 578 590 616

in Section "Monitor". These are for playing dvd fullscreen apparently but all they did for me was give me a black screen instead of a log-in screen.

I re-installed Mandriva Spring 2008, only this time wiped out my old /boot as well as root. MUCH better.

I still have monitor issues, but at least when I can show a screen, I can do something.

I'm not impressed with 08 and will probably go back to Free 2006 (at least that tolerated my CSX led monitor).


I will, however, see about editing things in X11 before I switch back.

Thanks all!

Moxieman