N350CA

Linspire Trouble: 101

I Try to log in Username: Root and my password is correct but when I press enter I get an eror stating

Vey Bad Error: Invalid Argument!
So I Press Enter And I Get Another Message Stating...
Bad Group information. Possibly error In Auth mode!

So I was wondering if linspire has a failsafe or a safe mode that I can go into? Its making me mad Because I have to do programming and all my data is on my laptop! I am used to Microsoft so I f I had an error in vista i could probably fix it within about 10 minutes but with linspire I only use it for text (.php to be more specific)! So Ya Can Someone help me? or am a in trouble like will the OS ever work again or will I have to reinstall

bcspratt

Owww.... error on login as root. Remember your Linspire CD can run as a live CD which would allow you to do a number of useful things (even on a corrupt system). The things I might consider are (1) is there a bad sector on the hard drive (2) perhaps a corrupt file or operating system or (3) a bad configuration file (perhaps /etc/passwd).

You might try running a file system check on you partition “sudo e2fsck /dev/hda1” assuming that it is on the 1st partition of the 1st hard drive.

If that works OK you might try a more complete a file system check “sudo e2fsck -c /dev/hda1” assuming that it is on the 1st partition of the 1st hard drive. the “-c” option forces a read only check on the entire partition.

It does not sound like a configuration file error but I would check /etc/passwd to make sure it is there and looking OK. You might compare it to /etc/passwd~ which is a backup of /etc/passwd. If they look dramatically different, you might try renaming the files to use the backup (keeping the original).

Once you lose the root password, it is often the case that you need to reinstall the operating system. Sounds bad but it does not have to mean a loss in data, Use the Live CD and a USB flash drive to save the you important data, then reinstall. And if you are reinstalling, you might consider putting all you important data on a separate partition from the operating system which gets mounted at boot time to /home or /root. That way you can reinstall the operating system more easily without the hassle of trying to save your data.

Lastly, Linspire also has forums at Forums - Powered by vBulletin.