SOLVED Cannot login to desktop, just command line.

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lupgaru

SOLVED Cannot login to desktop, just command line.

Post by lupgaru »

LMDE xfce going fine for 2 weeks, now when I boot up I only get command line . I type in user name the pass word and that as far as I can go. Tried recovery 2 times but it keeps going back to command line. This is after 2 weeks of running fine.
Thanks
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
widget

Re: Cannot login to desktop, just command line.

Post by widget »

What do you do after entering your user name and password?

You should get a user prompt at that point ($). Did you type;

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startx
?

That should take you to a desktop if all is well except for your DM which runs the gui login.

When you reach that log in and get to a tty prompt you can change to root using;

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sudo su
or by simply booting to recovery and giving your password should get you to root prompt (#).

Did you try;

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apt-get update
and

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apt-get update
These are not likely to get you any needed upgrades but may give errors that shed light on the problem.

You could also, to see if it is simply a scrambled package problem, try;

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dpkg-reconfigure -a
It is possible that there is some problem with permissions for your user. You could, although this is not encouraged, run, at the root prompt;

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startx
If that takes you to a desktop it would indicate that there is a problem with your user. You should be aware that you are, at that point, logged in as root to your system and anything you do will be taken as direction from the root user and you can totally screw your system. I will show that your system works. You could at that point log out and attempt to deal with this with more information.

That is about all anyone can tell you with no more info than you provide. When you boot to recovery, I know the screens scroll by fast, but did you see any errors?

If you did not try "startx" at the tty log in that is the place to start.

Take notes. Think back to the last time the system was up. Did you do anything different? Were there errors on the screen when you shut down?

Have you looked at any of the log files? This can be done with nano a command line text editor included in all Debian installs?

I believe your system should be using MDM as the DM. Have you tried;

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apt-get install --reinstall mdm
at a root (#) prompt?

Something has obviously gone wrong with your system. There should be some indication of it somewhere. You need to look for it.

The information you give can be summed up as; it ran for 2 weeks and now it doesn't. This is not something to base an idea on.

Did you shut down ever in those 2 weeks? What were you doing when on it. Have you added packages to the system and were there any irregularities to any of those installs?
lupgaru

Re: Cannot login to desktop, just command line.

Post by lupgaru »

Thanks widget for the advice. I followed all of it the best I could but still no luck.
Here's what I was running when it started, the latest update I believe, 3.2.04-486 #1 Debian 3.2.32-1 i686
after recovery it went to user and password prompt and after that I entered startx (did not know about startx.
After seeming to try to start it then gave me this error and the server gave up with fatal server error 1
'Parse error on line 21 of section Inputclass in the file /usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf " ~[??3?" is not a valid keyword in this section. (Note: the 3 ? should be Blacked out diamonds not on my keyboard) Then Fatal Server Error No screens found, then back to prompt.
I tried apt-get update but it could not connect. I went to sudo su then after prompt tried dpkg-reconfigure -a but after enter it just does nothing, no response for 10 minutes. Restarted and after getting root prompt again tried to reinstall mdm, it said I needed to get libdmx1 and after entering yes it could not get it from the server (no connection).It then said try fix-missing? but it did not recognize the command.
Went all through this 3 times to no avail. If I had DSL it might work but I don't, just Wireless.

I might have to give up and reinstall unless anyone has an idea. If not, thanks a Million for the effort!
widget

Re: Cannot login to desktop, just command line.

Post by widget »

lupgaru wrote:Thanks widget for the advice. I followed all of it the best I could but still no luck.
Here's what I was running when it started, the latest update I believe, 3.2.04-486 #1 Debian 3.2.32-1 i686
after recovery it went to user and password prompt and after that I entered startx (did not know about startx.
After seeming to try to start it then gave me this error and the server gave up with fatal server error 1
'Parse error on line 21 of section Inputclass in the file /usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf " ~[??3?" is not a valid keyword in this section. (Note: the 3 ? should be Blacked out diamonds not on my keyboard) Then Fatal Server Error No screens found, then back to prompt.
I tried apt-get update but it could not connect. I went to sudo su then after prompt tried dpkg-reconfigure -a but after enter it just does nothing, no response for 10 minutes. Restarted and after getting root prompt again tried to reinstall mdm, it said I needed to get libdmx1 and after entering yes it could not get it from the server (no connection).It then said try fix-missing? but it did not recognize the command.
Went all through this 3 times to no avail. If I had DSL it might work but I don't, just Wireless.

I might have to give up and reinstall unless anyone has an idea. If not, thanks a Million for the effort!
That is interesting.

Did you try straightening out the file?

You should be able to get to it from the root prompt using;

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nano /usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf
or the user prompt by adding "sudo".
I don't have a a laptop so this file should be pretty clean. This is not from LMDE but it is from Debian testing so it should be pretty much the same thing. May give you an idea what it is supposed to look like.

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# Example xorg.conf.d snippet that assigns the touchpad driver
# to all touchpads. See xorg.conf.d(5) for more information on
# InputClass.
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE, your distribution will likely overwrite
# it when updating. Copy (and rename) this file into
# /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d first.
# Additional options may be added in the form of
#   Option "OptionName" "value"
#
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad catchall"
        Driver "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
# This option is recommend on all Linux systems using evdev, but cannot be
# enabled by default. See the following link for details:
# http://who-t.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-ignore-configuration-errors.html
#       MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad ignore duplicates"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        MatchOS "Linux"
        MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/mouse*"
        Option "Ignore" "on"
EndSection

# This option enables the bottom right corner to be a right button on
# non-synaptics clickpads.
# This option is only interpreted by clickpads.
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "Default clickpad buttons"
        MatchDriver "synaptics"
        Option "SoftButtonAreas" "50% 0 82% 0 0 0 0 0"
EndSection

# This option disables software buttons on Apple touchpads.
# This option is only interpreted by clickpads.
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "Disable clickpad buttons on Apple touchpads"
        MatchProduct "Apple|bcm5974"
        MatchDriver "synaptics"
        Option "SoftButtonAreas" "0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0"
EndSection
lupgaru

Re: Cannot login to desktop, just command line.

Post by lupgaru »

Thanks for all the help Widget but it looks like I will re-sinstall. It's my fault, I realized that because after the last update I went in and changed that file to activate my touchpad. I have done it before but I really screwed up this time. Knock it up to knowing better next time. I followed your advice and tried to restore the file but to no avail. I even booted a live CD on another system and copied the file over to the messed up on line by line. Stil got error codes that the entry was wrong.
I'll do another install and get my updates but I'll know better this time.
Thanks Again for all the help. Everyone on the forums are great.
ponchopv

Re: SOLVED Cannot login to desktop, just command line.

Post by ponchopv »

Hi,

I had the same problem and just installed mdm.

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sudo apt-get install mdm
Hope it helps.
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