<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;">Hopefully the problem will be solved. Used dogpile.com to find a local guy who fixes Linux (he seemed to know his business over the phone), he'll charge me $85 for the fix, will come to my place to do the work ... very reasonable. So hopefully by Tues of next week I will be a happy camper and on my way, but thank you for the Linux comraderie.<BR><BR>--- On <B>Fri, 6/3/11, Rick Moen <I><rick@linuxmafia.com></I></B> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(16,16,255) 2px solid"><BR>From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com><BR>Subject: Re: [vox-tech] I'm the guy with the infinite login problem<BR>To: vox-tech@lists.lugod.org<BR>Date: Friday, June 3, 2011, 12:10 PM<BR><BR>
<DIV class=plainMail>Quoting Dr. Denny Scronek (<A href="http://us.mc1618.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=paszeski@yahoo.com" ymailto="mailto:paszeski@yahoo.com">paszeski@yahoo.com</A>):<BR><BR>> "Can I ssh to it?" Doesn't compute. Try again please.<BR><BR>To translate, Bill was asking if you're set up so he can remotely login<BR>to the command line of your machine rather than needing to visit your<BR>house physically just in order to help you solve your problem.<BR><BR>It would certainly be nice for you if someone's got the time and<BR>opportunity to visit you physically to help you. (I'm actually far too<BR>distant, down close to Stanford University.)<BR><BR>Because that might not happen, and in order to assist while you weigh<BR>options, here's something you can do that will gather potentially very<BR>useful debugging information:<BR><BR>1. Press Ctrl-Alt-F1 . You should see a black-background text console<BR>screen with a system
login prompt. Provide your username, then when<BR>prompted, your password. I expect you will successfully login, and will<BR>then be at a standard Linux system (bash shell) command-line prompt.<BR>Do:<BR><BR> cd /var/log<BR> less X.org.log<BR><BR>The 'less' program is a page-at-a-time display program (the name being a<BR>sort-of pun on the name of the 'more' program) that allows you to go<BR>up and down through the contents of an ASCII plaintext or similar file,<BR>including most logfiles. In looking at X.org.log, you will be seeing<BR>logged messages created when the X server process (the display engine) <BR>and related process start up, e.g., when you attempt login. The<BR>messages are (sorry!) a bit verbose, chattily talking about various<BR>aspects of the video-related hardware as it is probed and set to<BR>operating modes. What you are looking for is lines that indicate a<BR>serious problem of some
sort. For example, you might see lines showing<BR>a series of initialisation failures starting with inability to enable<BR>video hardware acceleration, with the result that the AIGLX driver<BR>module cannot be loaded, with the result that the X server process died.<BR><BR>One of the reasons to become familiar with the Linux command line is so<BR>you can deal effectively with such situations. For example, if you<BR>think you spot something meaningful in /var/log/X.org.log, you might<BR>desire to copy it onto, say, a USB flash drive or onto a remote shell<BR>account you have on a separate machine somewhere on the Internet. So,<BR>it would be handy to know how to manually mount a USB flash drive onto<BR>/mnt (or wherever), and it would be handy to know how to 'scp' (secure<BR>network copy) a file accross the Internet, e.g.:<BR><BR> cd /var/log<BR> scp X.org.log <A
href="http://us.mc1618.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=paszeski@someinternethost.com" ymailto="mailto:paszeski@someinternethost.com">paszeski@someinternethost.com</A>:<BR><BR>Unless you happen to be familiar with how to do such things, it might be<BR>more feasible to just jot down some notes on paper about what you find<BR>in X.org.log.<BR><BR>While you are in /var/log/, it's a good idea to also look around to see<BR>if there are any other logs whose entries at the time you attempt<BR>graphical login might give clues.<BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>vox-tech mailing list<BR><A href="http://us.mc1618.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=vox-tech@lists.lugod.org" ymailto="mailto:vox-tech@lists.lugod.org">vox-tech@lists.lugod.org</A><BR><A href="http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech" target=_blank>http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech</A><BR></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></td></tr></table>