X gets killed immediately after successful graphical logon

[Uwe Dippel-4]

I can't get into any of my sessions, whatever I do.

The machine starts up and shows kdm, as it has been doing for some years.
Only, whenever I logon, as any user, or any session (kde, gnome,
xfce), it starts, then some scrambling of the screen, and back I am at
login applet.
The only one that works is Failsafe.
Therefore, it can't be a problem of a wrong password; it rather looks
like any X session started after the successful logon must have some
setting that kills X.
Unfortunately, the Xorg.log does not show anything extraordinary.

I wonder how to debug this further ...?

Uwe

Please, Cc: to me in case of answers; due to the traffic on this list


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[Damon L. Chesser]

Uwe Dippel wrote:

> I can't get into any of my sessions, whatever I do.
>
> The machine starts up and shows kdm, as it has been doing for some years.
> Only, whenever I logon, as any user, or any session (kde, gnome,
> xfce), it starts, then some scrambling of the screen, and back I am at
> login applet.
> The only one that works is Failsafe.
> Therefore, it can't be a problem of a wrong password; it rather looks
> like any X session started after the successful logon must have some
> setting that kills X.
> Unfortunately, the Xorg.log does not show anything extraordinary.
>
> I wonder how to debug this further ...?
>
> Uwe
>
> Please, Cc: to me in case of answers; due to the traffic on this list
>
>
>  

Make a new user, log in as that user.  Alternatively, rename a user
/home/dir, log in as that user and let it rebuild your profile from
/etc/skel.  If you can then log in, you have a bad file in your home
dirs.  No idea what though.  If it works, that would give you at least
to log on, move over required data and start again.

HTH

--
Damon L. Chesser
damon@...
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser


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[Andrew Reid-4]

On Wednesday 14 May 2008 07:47, Uwe Dippel wrote:

> I can't get into any of my sessions, whatever I do.
>
> The machine starts up and shows kdm, as it has been doing for some years.
> Only, whenever I logon, as any user, or any session (kde, gnome,
> xfce), it starts, then some scrambling of the screen, and back I am at
> login applet.
> The only one that works is Failsafe.
> Therefore, it can't be a problem of a wrong password; it rather looks
> like any X session started after the successful logon must have some
> setting that kills X.
> Unfortunately, the Xorg.log does not show anything extraordinary.
>
> I wonder how to debug this further ...?

  If you are logging in successfully, then error messages are
being sent to the ".xsession-errors" file in your home directory --
check there for more clues.

  Also, the default start-up runs the ".xsession" file in your
home directory, if it exists and has appropriate permissions.
Try removing/renaming that.

                                        -- A.

> Please, Cc: to me in case of answers; due to the traffic on this list
 
  Gotcha, although I nearly missed this.

                                        -- A, again.

--
Andrew Reid / reidac@...


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[Uwe Dippel-4]

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Andrew Reid <reidac@...> wrote:

>> I wonder how to debug this further ...?
>
>  If you are logging in successfully, then error messages are
> being sent to the ".xsession-errors" file in your home directory --
> check there for more clues.

It is empty:

% ls -ltra
[...]
-rw-------  1 udippel udippel        0 2008-05-15 10:39 .xsession-errors
-rw-------  1 udippel udippel      245 2008-05-15 10:39 .Xauthority

>
>  Also, the default start-up runs the ".xsession" file in your
> home directory, if it exists and has appropriate permissions.
> Try removing/renaming that.

No change, I deleted it. It contained:

exec esd &
exec /usr/bin/startxfce4

I also created a new user, and she experiences the same problem.
-rw------- 1 testo testo    0 2008-05-15 10:43 .xsession-errors

What else could I do?

Uwe


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[John Allen-2]

Uwe Dippel wrote:

> On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Andrew Reid <reidac@...> wrote:
>
>  
>>> I wonder how to debug this further ...?
>>>      
>>  If you are logging in successfully, then error messages are
>> being sent to the ".xsession-errors" file in your home directory --
>> check there for more clues.
>>    
>
> It is empty:
>
> % ls -ltra
> [...]
> -rw-------  1 udippel udippel        0 2008-05-15 10:39 .xsession-errors
> -rw-------  1 udippel udippel      245 2008-05-15 10:39 .Xauthority
>
>  
>>  Also, the default start-up runs the ".xsession" file in your
>> home directory, if it exists and has appropriate permissions.
>> Try removing/renaming that.
>>    
>
> No change, I deleted it. It contained:
>
> exec esd &
> exec /usr/bin/startxfce4
>
> I also created a new user, and she experiences the same problem.
> -rw------- 1 testo testo    0 2008-05-15 10:43 .xsession-errors
>
> What else could I do?
>
>  

stop the login manager
login at the console
# X&
# export DISPLAY=:0.0
# xterm

now switch to the X display (Alt+F8 probably)
move cursor to the xterm, and
# /usr/bin/startxfce4

now see what happens.

If X crashes, the XFCE is crashing X, if not you should see some nice
XFCE problems.
> Uwe
>
>
>  


--
John Allen                          mailto:john.allen@...
CodeMountain                        http://www.codemountain.net

Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
up 9 days,  3:31, 19 users,  load average: 3.87, 3.99, 4.00


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[Uwe Dippel-4]

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 6:35 PM, John Allen <john.allen@...> wrote:

> now switch to the X display (Alt+F8 probably)
> move cursor to the xterm, and
> # /usr/bin/startxfce4
>
> now see what happens.

Now, no, I think I should change the subject or start a new thread?
It seems my install simply fails me completely now. I had to do some
repair when booting a few days back, then it worked and now the repair
tends to come up at boot, again.
But even if it doesn't, it is not okay. Unfortunately, all messages
flash by too quickly, and don't show in dmesg neither.
But there is always something like /dev/shm not found, some
udevdevdevsdev-message, the wireless is recognized, but fails latrer
during boot, and now apt-get also shows some weird messages.

That means, I better forget the whole thing and install, again, after
some 3 years?
But I'd still like to save/backup as much as possible.
The following script shows some of the misery:

% apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
10 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Setting up linux-image-2.6.18-6-686 (2.6.18.dfsg.1-18etch4) ...
Running depmod.
Finding valid ramdisk creators.
Using mkinitramfs-kpkg to build the ramdisk.
/usr/sbin/mkinitramfs-kpkg: line 35: /usr/bin/touch: Permission denied
mkinitramfs-kpkg failed to create initrd image.
Failed to create initrd image.
dpkg: error processing linux-image-2.6.18-6-686 (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 9
Setting up libxul0d (1.8.0.15~pre080323b-0etch2) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libxul0d.postinst: line 6: /usr/bin/touch: Permission denied
dpkg: error processing libxul0d (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of acroread:
 acroread depends on libxul0d; however:
  Package libxul0d is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing acroread (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of acroread-debian-files:
 acroread-debian-files depends on acroread (>= 8.1.2); however:
  Package acroread is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing acroread-debian-files (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of acroread-escript:
 acroread-escript depends on acroread (>= 8.1.2-0.3); however:
  Package acroread is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing acroread-escript (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of acroread-plugins:
 acroread-plugins depends on acroread (>= 8.1.2-0.3); however:
  Package acroread is not configured yet.
 acroread-plugins depends on acroread-escript; however:
  Package acroread-escript is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing acroread-plugins (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Setting up iceweasel (2.0.0.14-0etch1) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/iceweasel.postinst: line 12: /usr/bin/touch:
Permission denied
dpkg: error processing iceweasel (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mozilla-firefox:
 mozilla-firefox depends on iceweasel (>= 2.0.0.14-0etch1); however:
  Package iceweasel is not configured yet.
 mozilla-firefox depends on iceweasel (<< 2.0.0.14-0etch1.1~); however:
  Package iceweasel is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing mozilla-firefox (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of xulrunner-gnome-support:
 xulrunner-gnome-support depends on libxul0d; however:
  Package libxul0d is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing xulrunner-gnome-support (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of acroread-data:
 acroread-data depends on acroread (>= 8.1.2-0.3); however:
  Package acroread is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing acroread-data (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 linux-image-2.6.18-6-686
 libxul0d
 acroread
 acroread-debian-files
 acroread-escript
 acroread-plugins
 iceweasel
 mozilla-firefox
 xulrunner-gnome-support
 acroread-data
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


Is there any 'repair' function in Debian, some checking of packages?


Uwe


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[Kent West]

Uwe Dippel wrote:
> It seems my install simply fails me completely now. I had to do some
> repair when booting a few days back, then it worked and now the repair
> tends to come up at boot, again.
> But even if it doesn't, it is not okay. Unfortunately, all messages
> flash by too quickly, and don't show in dmesg neither.
> But there is always something like /dev/shm not found, some
> udevdevdevsdev-message, the wireless is recognized, but fails latrer
> during boot, and now apt-get also shows some weird messages.
>  

If you'll disable any login managers you have (one method would be to
edit /etc/init.d/[k|g|w|x]dm for example, and make "exit 0" the first
executable line in that script), then you'll be able to Shift-PgUp
through all the boot-up messages after logging in, even the ones not
shown by dmesg (as long as you don't switch to another VT, that is).


> That means, I better forget the whole thing and install, again, after
> some 3 years?
>  

I would only wipe/reinstall if you suspect a security compromise, or
just think it'd take less time than repairing. Repairing is usually the
better route.

> But I'd still like to save/backup as much as possible.
> The following script shows some of the misery:
>
> % apt-get upgrade
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree... Done
> 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> 10 not fully installed or removed.
> Need to get 0B of archives.
> After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used.
> Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
> Setting up linux-image-2.6.18-6-686 (2.6.18.dfsg.1-18etch4) ...
> Running depmod.
> Finding valid ramdisk creators.
> Using mkinitramfs-kpkg to build the ramdisk.
> /usr/sbin/mkinitramfs-kpkg: line 35: /usr/bin/touch: Permission denied
> mkinitramfs-kpkg failed to create initrd image.
> Failed to create initrd image.
> dpkg: error processing linux-image-2.6.18-6-686 (--configure):
>  subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 9
> Setting up libxul0d (1.8.0.15~pre080323b-0etch2) ...
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/libxul0d.postinst: line 6: /usr/bin/touch: Permission denied
>  

You're doing this as root, right?

Try touching a file (e.g., "touch myfile"); does it create, or update
the timestamp on, the file? Also try "/usr/bin/touch myfile" to make
sure you don't have a path issue.

Does "/usr/sbin/mkinitramfs-kpgk" exist? What are the perms on the file?
Is the volume on which that file sits mounted read/write?

--
Kent West
http://kentwest.blogspot.com




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[Andrew Reid-4]

On Wednesday 14 May 2008 22:46, Uwe Dippel wrote:
> On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Andrew Reid <reidac@...>
wrote:

> >> I wonder how to debug this further ...?
> >
> >  If you are logging in successfully, then error messages are
> > being sent to the ".xsession-errors" file in your home directory --
> > check there for more clues.
>
> It is empty:
>
> % ls -ltra
> [...]
> -rw-------  1 udippel udippel        0 2008-05-15 10:39 .xsession-errors
> -rw-------  1 udippel udippel      245 2008-05-15 10:39 .Xauthority
>
> >  Also, the default start-up runs the ".xsession" file in your
> > home directory, if it exists and has appropriate permissions.
> > Try removing/renaming that.
>
> No change, I deleted it. It contained:
>
> exec esd &
> exec /usr/bin/startxfce4

  If a new user has the same problem, then it's probably a fault
in the system.  It's after log-in, but the errors don't show up
in .xsession-errors.

  This means it's in a very narrow window, probably one or more
of the start-up scripts in /etc/kde3/kdm.  I forget which of Xstartup
or Xsession is run as the user, but it's probably one of those two.

  They're shell scripts, so one thing to try is to put "set -x"
in both of them, so they'll echo their output, and watch what
happens.

  It's also possible that it's somehow running the startup
scripts in /etc/X11/Xsession.d, and not writing errors to
.xsession-error, so you might double-check those, but I think
that's unlikely.

                                -- A.
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[Kamaraju S Kusumanchi]

<posted & mailed>

Uwe Dippel wrote:

> I can't get into any of my sessions, whatever I do.
>
> The machine starts up and shows kdm, as it has been doing for some years.
> Only, whenever I logon, as any user, or any session (kde, gnome,
> xfce), it starts, then some scrambling of the screen, and back I am at
> login applet.
> The only one that works is Failsafe.
> Therefore, it can't be a problem of a wrong password; it rather looks
> like any X session started after the successful logon must have some
> setting that kills X.
> Unfortunately, the Xorg.log does not show anything extraordinary.
>
> I wonder how to debug this further ...?

1) Disable the graphical login managers (gdm/kdm etc.,). Now log in into the
console prompt. Type either startx or xinit. Do you see any errors there?
Does X start without any problems?

2) Is your lo interface configured properly? What is the output of ifconfig?
Please post your /etc/network/interfaces. I would like to see if the lo
interface is configured properly.


raju
--
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/kk288/
http://malayamaarutham.blogspot.com/


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[Todd A. Jacobs]

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 01:47:46PM -0400, Kamaraju S Kusumanchi wrote:

> > I can't get into any of my sessions, whatever I do.

Make sure all your mount points are properly mounted. I recently had an
experience where /tmp wasn't being mounted, and so the X11 sockets
weren't being created.

--
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        -- Doctor Who, "Destiny of the Daleks"


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