No GDM Access
I am making my way through Keir Thomas' "Beginning Ubuntu Linux." I needed to delete SBackup folders from /var and /home. Both, in fact, all of my directories were locked (shell misstep). In the process of trying chown syntax I evidently made a serious error as sudo. I can access tty1 but not gdm. My username/password is accepted but returns to log-in screen. Gnome "safe-mode" fails. The error message is: "GDM could not write to your authorization file. . . Your Home Directory could not be opened for writing."
Is there a "newbie-possible" way to solve this from tty1 or should I reformat my hard drive?
Update:
To my surprise, I can get to a new GDM in this way: (By new, I mean I am root on a virgin desktop with all my programs and internet access.
1. boot to log-in
2. Alt+Ctrl+F1 to tty1
3. sudo shutdown now
4. give root password for maintenance
5. startx
6 in a virgin GDM -- not sure about the runlevel
In this post I am recording my observations but I really don't know what's going on. I would really appreciate a "heads-up" on what is happening and what I should do. I can't find wiki to decribe this state of affairs and right now I feel like I'm in Windows with no choice but to reformat my hard drive. Thanks a lot for any help.
|
