Hello All,
After my software froze, I couldn't boot anymore.
Booting stopped on a black screen showing all started processes after saying Check Battery status... [OK]

I ran recovery mode and repaired dpkg and checked the file system. After that the system boots again (apparently without errors) until the log on screen. If I enter username and password, the log on process shows me the hard drive for a while, then it turns black and returns to the log on screen again, I enter credentials again, again the same in an endless loop.

If I choose Console log on, I can log on and all commands on the command line work without problem.

Can somebody please help me to fix this problem? (rather help me find and fix it then just tell me what to do, so I can learn something)

I guess some file is corrupt so I tried look in some LOG-files, but there are so many and they are so confusing (for a beginner). I'm not very familiar with Linux so I don't really know where to search.

Thanks for your help.
Robin

clueless but happy to help

things to do in virtual terminal Alt+Ctrl+F1 (command line mode) login as you:

do you have available space on root drive? the df command will display available space, check root and home partitions ( / /home)

if you rename ~/.kde to ~/.kde-old then restart kde, this will indicate if it your KDE config causing the problem

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mv ~/.kde ~/.kde-old

Please provide the content of ~/.xsession-errors. This might be hard, but if you have another computer, you may wish to try using sftp to access your computer remotely.

I suspect processes crucial to KDE startup may have been damaged (like dpkg was).

Thanks for your help guys!

do you have available space on root drive? the df command will display available space, check root and home partitions ( / /home)

I have about 18GB (38%) of space available on the problem partition (where is also my home located.) I think that should do...

if you rename ~/.kde to ~/.kde-old then restart kde, this will indicate if it your KDE config causing the problem

Everything the same, although I have the feeling that booting and returning to the log in screen takes a little longer, but that might be perception.

Please provide the content of ~/.xsession-errors. This might be hard, but if you have another computer, you may wish to try using sftp to access your computer remotely.

I have an Ubuntu boot CD. For a beginner like myself an easy way to access the internet and mount, edit and read my problem partition. (although I would like to know how to access using sftp, but that's for later)
I guess there are some interesting entries in the .xsession-errors. But unfortunately I don't know (yet) how to use the information.

here the contents of the file:

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Xsession: X session started for robin at Tue Apr 17 08:35:59 CST 2012
Smart Common Input Method 1.4.9

Launching a SCIM daemon with Socket FrontEnd...
Loading simple Config module ...
Creating backend ...
Loading socket FrontEnd module ...
Starting SCIM as daemon ...
Launching a SCIM process with x11...
Loading socket Config module ...
Creating backend ...
Loading x11 FrontEnd module ...
GTK Panel of SCIM 1.4.9

Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Starting SCIM as daemon ...
SCIM has been successfully launched.
script for scim started.
script for auto started.
script for default started.
startkde: Starting up...
kdeinit4_wrapper: Warning: connect(/home/robin/.kde/socket-Laptop/kdeinit4__0) failed: : Connection refused
Bus error
startkde: Shutting down...
kdeinit4_wrapper: Warning: connect(/home/robin/.kde/socket-Laptop/kdeinit4__0) failed: : Connection refused
Error: Can not contact kdeinit4!
startkde: Running shutdown scripts...
startkde: Done.

Please try removing /home/robin/.kde/socket-* and /tmp/ksocket-*/