Stuck at SLIM login screen

[osiff]

I installed Arch Linux today and tried to install gnome. The first time I installed it, it gave me a bunch of errors. I reinstalled it and then it seemed to work. After that I tried to install gdm and get it to run but it wouldn't run and I got an error when I tried to install it so I uninstalled that and installed SLIM and all went well until I tried to reboot after setting it to start at boot. It looks good and gives no errors before but if I try to type in my account user name and password it says "Failed to execute login command" and then flashes at the regular ARCH login: prompt before returning to the SLIM login prompt. I tried to fix it by going in with another live cd to change the file so it doesn't load on boot but it is read only. I would have posted this on the Arch Linux forum but can answer the "Your answer" question because I cannot boot.

[hunter_thom]

Do any of these help?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SLiM
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=53685
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=118985
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=110789
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=67324

Take a look at your .xinitrc and /var/lock. Also check /var/log/slim.log.

[hunter_thom]

By the way. I created a ArchLinux forum account a long time ago but at the time the command resolved to week # of year then Linux. So, "18Linux" was mine, or real similar. Take a look and if it's still a date call then a uname call, it's a good bet that you can supply the week # + "Linux".

[oz]

would have posted this on the Arch Linux forum but can answer the "Your answer" question because I cannot boot.

Hello

If you should still desire to join the Arch forum, note that you can boot any Linux liveCD and utilize the terminal app found in it to get the "output" needed to answer the Arch Forum registration question.

[osiff]

I tried all of those links but none of them worked. It seems that I just need to create a .xinitrc file but I can't make one because I only have read only access with a live cd because it belongs to root.

[Jonathan183]

chroot in from the live CD ... that way you can su to your regular user cd and create .xinitrc with correct permissions.

[osiff]

Sorry for being so naive but how would I go about doing that?

[jayd512]

From the LiveCD, open a terminal and do the following:

mkdir /mnt/sdax            <replace x with your home partition>
mount /dev/sdax /mnt/sdax
chroot /mnt/sdax /bin/bash

You should then be able to make changes to your .xinitrc.

[osiff]

And where do I put the .xinitrc file and what do I put in it?

[jayd512]

Put the file in your home directory. And the file can be very simple.

#!/bin/sh

#
# ~/.xinitrc
#
# Executed by startx (run your window manager from here)
#

exec gnome-session

Make sure the file is executable:

chmod +x .xinitrc

That should get you logged into Gnome.