recently my slack computer froze and i had to to a hard restart. after rebooting, fsck ran and repaired some things.

now, when i login either as root or another user, the motd is displayed, then a pause, the i get the login prompt again. this continues indefinitely.

i don't even know where to begin. i'm not all that new with slackware, but have never had to deal with something like this and linux. any suggestions where to start?

What happens if you log in in runlevel 1? (single user mode)

Sounds to me like the logout call has been placed in your bashrc, but I can't really be sure. If you're able to log in as root in RL1, though, you can recreate your userids and check your bashrc.

To get into runlevel 1 without being able to log in, you need to tell the kernel to start in runlevel 1 at boot time with the LILO menu. Instead of typing Linux (or choosing Linux), type "Linux 1" (note the space). That'll start your system and go directly to runlevel 1, where you can do system maintenance such as checking the rc's, and seeing whether you need to recreate the userids. Not entirely sure how you'd go about recreating root, though... I'd start with removing the bashrc and see what happens.

well, i was able to login with RL1. i log in as root and get a shell prompt. i'm able to run things as normal.
what exactly am i looking for in rc.d? you mentioned something of bashrc and an userid. do you mean just delete something called bashrc? and how would i go about recreating the userids?

also, i keep getting errors with the file system when rebooting. when i run fsck, i keep getting a message about the super block, and sometimes it just exits it saying something about error 11 (i'm not at the computer right now, i'll check again later). when i try to run fsck while in RL1, it warns be that if it run while the drive is mounted, it will cause file system errors. i have an ext2 file system. hard drive is hde. hde1 is mounted as /. hde6 is /usr and hde7 is /home. other partition is swap.

i'm beginning to wonder if this is just a hard drive failure. sorry if some of this sounds pretty noobish, but it is with cause. thanks for your help so far. i will try some more later this evening.

Wow...forgot about this one. Turns out it was a memory module going out. Thanks for all the help though.

why are you still using ext2/3. Compatability with windows or nolstalgic realsions :P?

Neither, at the time I was still pretty green and whatever tutorial I was looking at said that they were the most compatible or easiest to use or something. I was also concerned about performance since it is installed on old AMD K6-2 450 MHZ computer and I wanted to run a game server off of it, while learining Slackware.

I doubt I would go that route anymore. I'm still not sure which fs is the best, it seems to be debated heavily. I just wanted something quick and easy. Maybe you can recommend one?

ReiserFS or Ext3 would be the best choices for "normal" uses and data care at the same time.

highly recommend reiserFS. my system used to shutdown its power instantly at random times, has done this about 50 times over about 3 months and ever time linux has no problems booting back up after doing all its magic that reiserFS provides.

btw the problem is now fixed. seems that it doesnt like to be run at a 192mhz FSB anymore

Well, it sounds as if reiserFS is the way to go. Is there more than one version of reiserFS, I have seen mention of reiser4 or something of the sort. Is this an updated version? I think I remember something about it not being native to Slackware or the Linux kernel or something. Just wondering if I could pick someone's brain about it...or perhaps I should go read some updated material one it.

ReiserFS (or Reiser 3) - Comes by default with the kernels, stable (only receives bug fixing patches, no major overhaul). From a technical perspective, uses balanced trees. This is the one that Slack refers to.

Reiser4 - Only available by default in the mm series kernels, otherwise you need to patch the kernel. Works fine, although some questions about whether it's quite production ready or not. Uses dancing trees, and is supposed to be faster than ReiserFS.

yeah i've heard the rumors that ReiserFS 4 is a shitload faster than 3 but I think its worth just holding out and use the existing stable one with slackware as again the new version isn't as stable yet.

Even so ReiserFS over ext3 is so much faster. I've tried installing slack back last year wit ext3 then formatted and installed again with reiserfs and everything boots up a whole lot faster.

depending on how hosed slackware is from the bad ram thing, sounds like i will be switching to reiserFS if i need to reinstall. what the heck...may as well do a reinstall anyways, update to latest slack.