Yet another login issue

[yuri21]

I'd actually wanted to post in Marcel's topic but... mmm, this could be a different issue altogether.

Anyways, I've just installed Linux Mint latest version(Gnome) but have been unable to login. I typed in my username and password, hear a "beep" but I'm still stuck at the login screen.

I've already deleted everything with .gnome, .gnome2(all related folders) but to no avail. The login still doesn't work.

Is there some sort of command I can use to "chown" all the folders in /home again? After all, it's been quite a while since I used Linux and well, some of the folder ownership might've gone poof.

Thank you!

[Husse]

Well I'm no fan of recursive commands but

Code: Select all

sudo chown -R your_user_name: /home/*

Possibly you don't need /*

[yuri21]

Thank you. Although the issue seems to have gotten worse. Now, Mint can't get past the "booting" stage. At startup, it hangs and when I press Alt + Ctrl + F1, all it says is "booting".

I've reinstalled the o/s but it still seems to be stuck at that stage.

Of course, that could've been because I'd re-connected my other 2 hdds after reinstalling Mint. But surely, reconnecting some hardware would likely not have any effect on the booting of an o/s?

[Husse]

But surely, reconnecting some hardware would likely not have any effect on the booting of an o/s?

You bet it could
If the OS did not expect the disks, it could have problems coping with the add ons
This is generally speaking for any OS.
It should however not get any problem(s)
See what happens if you disconnect the disks again
Maybe try to boot with no home partition - don't really know what will happen

[yuri21]

Oohkay, I gotcha. When I'll get to doing this, I dunno but maybe in the next 3 to 4 days' or so.


Thanks!

[yuri21]

Okay, I finally got to it.

Hmm... all right, when I disconnected my other 2 hard drives, it could boot into the startup screen.

However, I still was unable to login. Undeterred, I did the chown command:

sudo chown -Rvf hidan:hidan /home/hidan

Okay, it turns out that the ownership is still the same. Yet, logging in doesn't work! I even tried all the different sessions offered but it still failed. And there's no error message either.

Why is this happening? Is there something else I can try?
Oh btw, my /home has 3.82gb free. That should be enough to log-in, right?

And this is /var/log/messages

http://rapidshare.com/files/73574068/messages.html

Edit: just removed .Xauthority . Still no luck. I wonder if it's 'cos of my read-write permissions?

Edit #2: just realised something. In tty-2 mode(alt + ctrl + f2) , I was able to login with my username and password! This means that the gui is not working?

Edit #3: I know this is likely a blind shot but I'll try chmodding 777 .Iceauthority when I get some time on my hands.

Edit #4: Also, I just installed smartmontools on WinXP. Having reviewed the status of all the hdds, I can safely state that unless it's a mechanical issue with my 80 gb hdd(that contains WinXP and Linux), it isn't a factor which is impeding Mint login.

[yuri21]

Bah running "sudo chmod 777 .ICEauthority" didn't have any effect. I think it's time to bring out the hammer and do something about this problem.

[Husse]

Edit #2: just realised something. In tty-2 mode(alt + ctrl + f2) , I was able to login with my username and password! This means that the gui is not working?

Something along that line probably. What about startx from tty2?
And are you unable to log in or does x not start?
If it becomes to hard, make a fresh install. It may not be worth it to try to fix the problem

[yuri21]

Edit #2: just realised something. In tty-2 mode(alt + ctrl + f2) , I was able to login with my username and password! This means that the gui is not working?

Something along that line probably. What about startx from tty2?
And are you unable to log in or does x not start?
If it becomes to hard, make a fresh install. It may not be worth it to try to fix the problem

Hmmm... I'll try the startx thing.

Actually, I'd already reinstalled but the problem was still there. :/ I could try downloading Mint and burning a new cd again but I'd verified the Torrent download was complete, verified Md5 and burnt the cd at 4x. What I did before reinstalling was to delete and recreate the partition for "/".

Btw, how would one create a new user via Terminal?

[nick]

Hi

Btw, how would one create a new user via Terminal?

Code: Select all

sudo useradd

Nick

[yuri21]

Hi

Btw, how would one create a new user via Terminal?

Code: Select all

sudo useradd

Nick

Woot! That worked!

But how do you modify the permissions of the user? I remember in Ubuntu Feisty, there was something called User Groups? Is there such a similar feature in Mint? 'Cos I'm getting this message and I can't edit anything in nano or even gedit. "lucifiel is not in the sudoers file."

Btw, Mint-Assistant doesn't seem to launch?

[yuri21]

Finally... after tons of reinstallations and retries, I finally managed to create a new user-account which did work with gksudo and didn't get any "username not in sudoers file" message. Thank you to everyone, including Clem, in the irc channel who helped me so much!

Now, on to the topic of booting with my 2 hdds, I'm completely stumped! I've edited fstab and even tried booting Mint with only 1 of the other 2 hdds connected but Mint refuses to boot! It'll only boot IF my 80 gb hdd is the only hdd connected to the system. Yes! Mint won't even go past "booting..." if any of the other 2 hdds are connected.

I loaded Testdisk from SystemRescueCd and it doesn't seem to detect any superblock errors with my other 2 hdds, or with my main linux partitions(/ and /home). Any suggestions before I give up on this very thorny issue? It seems that either GG or this variant of GG is much more trouble than is warranted. I'm thinking I should stick with either FF or an older version of Mint before I go out of my mind.

Edit: If I boot into Recovery mode with my 160 gb pata hdd, Mint boots halfway and stops at the "uniform cd-rom driver revision blah blah" line. I'll try it with my other 80 gb hdd now.

Also, even if I toggle acpi(acpi=off), it doesn't work either.

Here's fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda7
UUID=0afca1f8-618b-4972-a02e-e3bf5a17fe45 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda6
UUID=c46971c0-dc7f-4447-9a8a-0f79eae92242 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sda1
UUID=56B4D57FB4D56253 /media/sda1 ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=bb018198-3831-4217-89b1-ee6058c401cf none swap sw 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sdc1 :
UUID=04188596-bf72-4175-a32e-66788620fabb /media/sdc1 ext3 defaults 0 1
#/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1
UUID=736cd583-c35f-45e2-b288-40af01fcc8ad ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sdb2 /media/sdb2
UUID=792c6c42-9186-4e8c-abaa-270b8a600d2c ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sdd1
/dev/sdd1 /media/sdd1 ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sdd2
/dev/sdd2 /media/sdd2 ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0 0

[yuri21]

Great! I think the ext3 partition on my other 80 gb hdd is corrupt. Crud... I'm starting to think that using the ext3 format so it could be accessed via Windows is a bad idea. That's 'cos more than once, the FS-Driver sort of corrupted my ext3 partition.

There's no other driver for Windows that allows for read/write access to ext3 partitions, is there?

Bah... think I'll revert to ntfs partitions instead.

[yuri21]

By the dancing bananas, I've already reformatted and converted all my ext3 partitions on my internal hdds to ntfs.

Still, no joy: meaning, I'm still stuck at the booting screen. :/

[yuri21]

Oh boy, I decided to boot one more time in Recovery mode and this time, I got the dreaded ata_piix error messages.

[yuri21]

From Ubuntu forums:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=586894

I am a new linux user and I too have been getting the "disk drive not detected" error during installation. In another thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=617929
ChrisBieda suggested changing the jumper on the Western Digital drive from Master to Single. I did this and it has solved the problem on my system. Thanks ChrisBieda!

I guess I'll give it a shot and set the jumpers. The hard drive is indeed in Single mode but without any jumpers on it.

[Husse]

I haven't had the time to come back to you until now - or you have not posted for a while - mostly one days worth of my posts cover a page....
I think this is getting a bit dangerous - you may destroy more than you cure in your search for a solution.
The only real test now is to disconnect the disk with your home and install on another and see what happens. If you still have the problems..... but if they disappear you know where to look.
Oh - I'm very rarely on the IRC, I get to distracted by it...

[yuri21]

I haven't had the time to come back to you until now - or you have not posted for a while - mostly one days worth of my posts cover a page....
I think this is getting a bit dangerous - you may destroy more than you cure in your search for a solution.
The only real test now is to disconnect the disk with your home and install on another and see what happens. If you still have the problems..... but if they disappear you know where to look.
Oh - I'm very rarely on the IRC, I get to distracted by it...

Yeah, you've got a point and don't worry, I was just trying to find a solution. :p

Oh well, given that I don't have any spare hdd for installing Mint again, perhaps I'll come back when this issue has been fixed in the next version of Ubuntu/Mint. I'm very sure that my hard disks are in good condition and I'll run Spinrite to see if anything's wrong.

Anyways, perhaps I'll try another distro like Wolvix or something else.