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

[Vram]

On Sat, 2005-12-10 at 12:23 -0800, Vram wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-12-10 at 12:10 -0800, John Jordan wrote:
> > 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. :(
> 
> 
> 
> Did you make a root account??
> 
> Vram


I should have said...

Did you activate the root account???

Vram


> 
> 
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