Cannot log on to desktop.

[ice2921]

I recently upgraded from 11.4 to 12.1 and now I cannot logon to me desktop. It shows me the login screen and logs me in to an empty desktop with just mouse functionality. I was getting an error that said that it was unable to load session "GNOME". So I though maybe it was because it my graphics card was too old and simply could not handle gnome 3, so I went into yast2 and removed all the packages that I could see that referenced gnome 3. It now get psat the error message but still drops me into a blank desktop with just the mouse. I am not sure what borked my system so any help would be much appreciated. Thank you all.

[atreyu]

Hi,

Go to a virtual console (Ctrl+Alt+F1/F2/F3, etc.) and attempt to log in with your normal user account/password. If that works, then move your GNOME-specific dirs in your home directory to a backup location temporarily, e.g.

mv ~/.gnome ~/gnome-backup
mv ~/.gnome2 ~/gnome2-backup

you can also try blowing away /tmp files (as root).

then jump back to your graphical login terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F7 or whatever) and try to log in.

[ice2921]

Hi,

Go to a virtual console (Ctrl+Alt+F1/F2/F3, etc.) and attempt to log in with your normal user account/password. If that works, then move your GNOME-specific dirs in your home directory to a backup location temporarily, e.g.

mv ~/.gnome ~/gnome-backup
mv ~/.gnome2 ~/gnome2-backup

you can also try blowing away /tmp files (as root).

then jump back to your graphical login terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F7 or whatever) and try to log in.

Thanks for the response. I was able to move the gnome2 directory, but still logs on to blank desktop.

[atreyu]

okay, you've got more options.

first, check the contents of this file, if it exists:

~/.xsession-errors

if it has relevant info in it, post it here.

if not, then continue reading.

you can log in as root, and move your entire home directory, e.g.:

mv /home/$user /home/${user}.bak

then recreate the dir, e.g.:

install -o $user -g $group -m 0700 -d /home/$user

then try and log in.

but before you do that, is gnome (or some other DE) installed? what is in this file?

~/.xsession

also, can you reboot into text mode (i.e., runlevel 3 or whatever it is in your system) and get into graphical mode w/startx?

if not, try putting the following into a file named ~/.xinitrc

#!/bin/bash
exec gnome

then make it executable, then run startx.

if it doesn't work, check out the contents of your ~/.xsession-errors file, like before.