[PLUG] HELP! Broken Ubuntu! Can't login!

[John Jordan]

I was reading on Ubuntu Forums and found a thread about making 
backups. Someone suggested Kdar. I installed it via Synaptic on 
my Ubuntu-64 Breezy laptop. I launched it from terminal because it 
did not create a launch setting under the Applications menu. The 
Help files were not working, so I fumbled my way through starting a 
new archive. The archive was to be named 12_10_2005 on my 
external USB disk, which is formatted ext3.

It ran for about 50-60 seconds and then locked up Linux. Keyboard 
and mouse dead. Had to hit the power button. 

When I restarted I tried again, this time with no other applications 
running. It seemed to go much better. It progressed to about 150 
Mb, about 10 minutes running time, then suddenly it disappeared 
from the screen. I had left the terminal window open and the last 
line was that it had crashed.

I wanted to see if it had actually created part of the archive, so I 
launched Konqueror. This produced an error message that KDE 
could not run. (I use Gnome for desktop.) I tried a few things, but 
nothing would get Konqueror to launch. At that point I decided to 
shut down and restart. I did System > Shut down and it appeared 
to shut down normally.

It restarted normally and gave me the usual login screen. But when 
I entered my username and password it gave me an error message 
that my profile "is not installed on this computer." I tried several 
other options under "Session" but the only one that will log me in is 
"Failsafe Terminal."

Supposedly, this is a way for me to fix wat is wrong. Unfortunately, 
I have no clue as to what needs to be fixed or how to do it from a 
terminal. The terminal window is running in a corner of the screen, 
and it appears that X is running.

At this time my computer is essentially dead. The only thing I can 
think of to do is to wipe the hard disk and reinstall from scratch. 
Ugh. I do have a backup that I made with Dump a couple days ago. 
The backup file is intact on the external USB drive -- at least it 
should be still there, unless that Kdar POS buggered it up 
somehow. It is a backup from /, so it should be the whole shebang 
(9+ Gb file). I have no idea how to use it to restore the system, 
however.

I'm in deep doo-doo here. :(