[EdLUG] Unable to login to my kubuntu 20.04 desktop

[John Dow]

Hi Alistair,

There could be many reasons why this has happened, but ultimately the 
thing that matters is that the /home directory is now empty and you 
should restore it from backup.

John

On 07/04/2021 19:54, Alistair wrote:
>
> I have managed to foul up my Thinkpad running kubuntu 20.04, and 
> cannot login to the desktop.
>
> I can login to the TTY2 console, where 'HOME=/'. The /home folder 
> contains only '.' and '..'.
>
> I was trying to delete some folders and files from an external hdd. 
> These had previously been created using the 'rsync' command on this 
> m/c and account.
>
> Deleting failed using the GUI so I tried to recursively remove the 
> from the command line as the normal user, then using sudo.
>
> At this point I started getting messages about system crash, kmail 
> started complaining that it could not write to mailboxes. There were 
> other messages so I shut the box down, during which it reported that 
> it could not write to the drive.
>
> It booted up to the GUI login screen, but refused login to my account.
>
> I switched to the TTY2 console and logged in there:
>
> It reports "no directory, logging in with HOME=/"
>
> The 'ls -a /home' command results in "'.' and '..'" only.
>
> It refuses to start the gui (startx) timing out with:
>
> "xauth: timeout in locking authority file //.Xauthority
>
> xaut: timeout in locking authority file //.Xauthority
>
> (EE)
>
> Fatal server error
>
> (EE) Cannot open log file "//.local/share/xorg/xorg.1.log
>
> (EE)
>
> (EE)
>
> Please consult the X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help
>
> (EE)
>
> xinit: giving up
>
> Xinit: unable to connect to X server: connection refused
>
> xinit: server error
>
> xauth: timeout in locking authority file //.Xauthority"
>
> How do I recover the system?
>
> Regards,
>
> Alistair
>
>
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