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Re: can't start gdm or login as user



On 2002-03-28 12:03:48, Dale Hair wrote:
> My wife's laptop crashed last night and after restarting gdm will not
> start.  I get a message 
> 
> Server Authorization directory (daemon/ServAuthDir) is set to
> /var/lib/gdm but this does not exist. Please correct gdm configuration
> /etc/gdm/gdm.conf and restart gdm.
> 
> and a blinking cursor.  When I press ENTER more services start up and I
> get
> 
> Starting GNOME Display Manager: gdmgdm_config_parse Authdir /var/lib/gdm
> does not exist. Aborting.
>  already running.
> 
> and then the login prompt.
> 
> The directory /var/lib/gdm does exist.

Does it look like this?

drwxr-x---    2 gdm      gdm          4096 Mar 27 22:15 gdm/

See if the following files are missing (you should probably only have
the shadow files if you actually enabled that feature) or corrupted,
typically disk crashes leave binary data in them and as these are text
files it should be easy to spot.  If so, you will have backup copies
named similarly but with a '-' at the end (passwd-, shadow- etc).

> I can login as root and startx OK, but when I try to login as pamela I
> get a message 
> 
> unable to cd to "/home/pamela"
> 
> The directory /home/pamela does exist.

With what permissions and what ownership/permissions, same question for
/home.  Did you fsck your disk?


/Allan
-- 
Allan Wind
P.O. Box 2022
Woburn, MA 01888-0022
USA

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