Ubuntu Desktop Looping?!

[Kent Frazier]

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 21:28:02 -0500, Dr. Sichendra Bista
<drbista at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear friends:
> 
> I installed the ubuntu in my AMD3000+ with much difficulty and whining
> for a few days (See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=12352 )
> 
> And also I made the X server running (thanks to Mr. Chris Jones) by
> installing the X server and ubuntu-desktop manually which, to my
> astonishment, the installer didn't install on its own.
> 
> I am getting amazing problem when I try to login to the X windows
> after I installed ubuntu-desktop, it says login timed out and keeps on
> looping on the graphical windows. Any idea? Or this has to do
> something with the primary user I created and the one already there
> with the same user ID which I created with FC1 in shared /home?
> 
> It is giving an error when I tried to run in "failsafe terminal" mode
> that reads: "bash: /home/drbista/.bashrc : Permission denied"
> 
> Any solution or suggetion appreciated!?
> 
> Thanking you for your invaluable time and irreparable cooperation.
> 
> May you, your team and your family be successful in your mission,
> prosperous, healthy, happy, free from sufferings and in peace, always!
> 
> Webocratically yours,
> Dr. Sichendra Bista
> eParliament.org

I had this problem (the ubuntu-desktop metapackage and some others not
being installed during the install, and being dumped at a prompt
afterwards) as well, but I found out that it was something I was doing
wrong.  Were you by any chance trying to install from a Hoary image? 
If you were, did you update packages during the install process?  This
is what caused problems for me, but it introduced dependency issues
that prevented ubuntu-desktop from being installed and caused X.org
not to function correctly.  After trying again and letting it install
without updating, it all went through fine.  The reason for this, as
far as I can see, is that with the stable release, major dependency
issues aren't going to be introduced because the repos have pretty
much been frozen.  Any updates you will encounter will be minor bug
fixes.  In a development release, however, updating before the
packages are all installed can cause all sorts of problems.  Also, if
you are installing Hoary, I would suggest using one of the Array CDs
instead of a daily for your install medium.  The latest can be found
at http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/hoary/array-3/.

If you were installing Warty, then I am not sure what is wrong.  Are
you using the i386 or the amd64 image?  I think there may be some
issues with the amd64 architecture (it is not as mature as i386).

Hope everything resolves itself.

Kent