<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=windows-1252">
</head>
<body>
<p>Hi Alistair,
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>John
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 07/04/2021 19:54, Alistair wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:4639293.31r3eYUQgx@lappy3">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;
charset=windows-1252">
<meta name="qrichtext" content="1">
<style type="text/css">p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; }</style>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">I have managed to foul up my Thinkpad running kubuntu 20.04, and cannot login to the desktop.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">I can login to the TTY2 console, where 'HOME=/'. The /home folder contains only '.' and '..'.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">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.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">Deleting failed using the GUI so I tried to recursively remove the from the command line as the normal user, then using sudo.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">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.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">It booted up to the GUI login screen, but refused login to my account.</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">I switched to the TTY2 console and logged in there:</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">It reports "no directory, logging in with HOME=/"</p>
<p style="-qt-paragraph-type:empty; margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; "> </p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">The 'ls -a /home' command results in "'.' and '..'" only.</p>
<p style="-qt-paragraph-type:empty; margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; "> </p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">It refuses to start the gui (startx) timing out with:</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">"xauth: timeout in locking authority file //.Xauthority</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">xaut: timeout in locking authority file //.Xauthority</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">(EE)</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">Fatal server error</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">(EE) Cannot open log file "//.local/share/xorg/xorg.1.log</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">(EE)</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">(EE)</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">Please consult the X.Org Foundation support at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://wiki.x.org">http://wiki.x.org</a> for help</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">(EE)</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">xinit: giving up</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">Xinit: unable to connect to X server: connection refused</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">xinit: server error</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">xauth: timeout in locking authority file //.Xauthority"</p>
<p style="-qt-paragraph-type:empty; margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; "> </p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">How do I recover the system?</p>
<p style="-qt-paragraph-type:empty; margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; "> </p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">Regards,</p>
<p style=" margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px;">Alistair</p>
<br>
<fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>