[PlanetCCRMA] Help! No login window

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Tue, 2005-02-01 at 04:44, andres@geminiflux.com wrote:
> Hi all.
> I'm back on windows writing this email, and I'm very annoyed that the middle
> button doesn't paste! The reason for this is that my Fedora partition is not
> booting properly. Here are the symptoms, I hope the solution is simple and some
> of you can help out.
> Grub functions properly, and booting starts normally, even displaying the little
> computer with the progress bar. All progress goes normally until it is time to
> start the login window. The usual message "Fedora Core (tettnang) Localhost
> login:" (I'm paraphrasing) appears, and where the login screen should appear, I
> get a blank screen. There is some disk activity for about 15-20 seconds, and
> then it stops. The systems seems not to be completely halted, because if I
> press ctrl-alt-del, a normal reboot procedure starts (it takes a while-like a
> normal shutdown, apparently shutting down modules and unmounting the disks-no
> unclean shutdown reported on next boot).

Try <ctrl><alt><f1> at that point. You should get a text login prompt.
You could login and try to see what processes are around ("ps axuw" will
list everything). Maybe you will find a likely culprit (something hung
that is stopping the rest). 

Sounds like X is not startting up. See what you have in
/var/log/xorg.0.log (or similar name). 

-- Fernando

> Before this problem happened I was happily using kde, and shutdown the computer
> (which went normally), although I had many windows open (which might create a
> large session on next kde boot). I then booted windows, did some work, and then
> shut down windows which went normally.
> Something strange that happened after the first fedora boot failure was that the
> initial grub and kernel report screens no longer take up the whole screen, but
> rather their 'real' pixel size. I have a 1400x1050 screen.
> My system is a Dell Inspiron 8200, P4 1.6GHz 512 Mb, ATI Radeon 9000 (M9). I
> have 3 fedora kernels installed, which exhibit the same problem (the original
> FC2 kernel, and the latest planet and planetedge kernels).
> Please help me make use of my middle button again!