At a certain moment I tried to switch the user and to open another session which should have opened on vt8.

This failed: the upper part of the screen became garbled, and then I got back the login screen again. I tried again, and then I got the login screen back of the first user. I was not able to use CTRL-ALT-F1 to get to a terminal.

I rebooted, same issue. When I enter the password and press <enter>, the screen goes garbled, then black with a mouse pointer, then the login screen is presented again.

As far as I know before this happened I did not upgrade or install anything.

After restarting I tried to remove everything from /tmp and everything KDE related from /var/tmp but to no avail. I tried to rename ~/.kderc and ~/.kde/.

I can issue startx from the console, and then XFCE starts fine.

Debian Squeeze
2.6.32-5-amd64
kdm version 4.4.5-3

This is the output of /var/log/kdm.log:

Code: Select all

X.Org X Server 1.7.7
Release Date: 2010-05-04
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 x86_64 Debian
Current Operating System: Linux donald-pc 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 SMP Thu Aug 12 13:01:50 UTC 2010 x86_64
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-amd64 root=UUID=40ac2365-5272-41b5-b645-582f9ad74348 ro quiet
Build Date: 15 July 2010  03:08:26PM
xorg-server 2:1.7.7-3 (Cyril Brulebois <kibi@debian.org>)
Current version of pixman: 0.16.4
        Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
        to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
        (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
        (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Sun Sep 19 21:42:47 2010
(==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"
FATAL: Module fbcon not found.
SELinux: Disabled on system, not enabling in X server
QFont::fromString: Invalid description 'Serif,20,5,0,50,0'
QFont::fromString: Invalid description 'Sans Serif,10,5,0,50,0'
QFont::fromString: Invalid description 'Sans Serif,10,5,0,75,0'
SELinux: Disabled on system, not enabling in X server
QFont::fromString: Invalid description 'Serif,20,5,0,50,0'
QFont::fromString: Invalid description 'Sans Serif,10,5,0,50,0'
QFont::fromString: Invalid description 'Sans Serif,10,5,0,75,0'
<file stops here>


All the error messages you see are in the log file as well when KDE still did start.

Now what can I do except re-installing Linux?

jlinkels

Which graphics driver do you have? Many ( if not all ) handle the situation of multiple applications using Desktop Effects poorly, leading to systems locking up such as this.

For repairing KDE, can you try starting an XTerm, then issuing "startkde" from there?

Well, it is solved.

Your directions helped me ... somewhat. When I tried to start xterm as root it worked fine, and so did KDE.

As a normal user it would not work. I saw an error message that a file could not be written to /tmp/xkeyboard-something. The /tmp directory proved to have drw------- permissions, instead of drwxrwxrwt. AFter setting the permissions right, KDE started fine.

What makes this so incredibly stupid was that I ran into this same error (wrong /tmp permissions) years and years ago with exactly the same behaviour for KDM. I was so proud I solved this that I posted it on several forums. Now googling for it did not even reveal my own posts...

Thanks for that pointer that eventually make me find it.

jlinkels

I apparently have the same problem, and my tmp directory has drwxrwxrwt permissions, so I cant clean it because it tells me that is currently busy. Can you help me?