[ping seanh] Re: log in problem

[NoOp]

On 10/03/2010 03:44 PM, Thierry de Coulon wrote:
> On Monday 04 October 2010, Ash Wyllie wrote:
>> I can't log onto my laptop from the internal drive.
>>
>> I can use the computer a USB stick.
>>
>> I can see that the drive is there, that all the data is on it, and that
>> there is no free space (0 bytes) on the drive.
> 
> That may be the key of your problem: no place, the system can't create logs.
> How is your disk partitioned? "A la Windows", with one big partition and 
> everything in it?
> 
>> When I try to log in, there is a notice
>>
>> "INSTALL PROBLEM
>>
>> The comfiguration of dedfaults for Gnome Power Management have not been
>> installled properly
>>
>> Please  contact your computer administrator."
>>
>> Is there some way to get at the hard drive and delete a couple files?
> 
> I'm not sure to understand "I can use the computer a USB stick". Anyway, you 
> should find a way to boot from a live system (USB stick or live CD), then 
> mount your disk/partition and, as root, you should ne able to delete files.
> 
> You can also check the size of the directories, most probably /home/<your 
> user>. If one directory is _very_ big, then the file to delete is there.
> 
> If a program get's stuck in an error loop, it may fill up your disk space with 
> a huge error log. That's why /home should _always_ be on a separate 
> partition, so if your home directory get's full, you can still log in as root 
> to clear space (that's where Ubuntu's policy bites back as you'll have to do 
> this at the command line...)
> 
> Hope that helps
> 
> Thierry

Other than the 0 bytes, the gnome power manager error msg sounds exactly
like the problem that seanh was having in the "Can't login into Gnome
after updates yersterday (10.04" [1]. I wonder if this is becoming a trend.

http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ubuntu.user/228196
[Can't login into Gnome after updates yersterday (10.04]
<quote>
"The configuration defaults for Gnome Power Manager have not been
installed correctly."
</quote>
Full thread:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ubuntu.user/228196

Perhaps if we can get seanh and Ash to provide the /var/apt/history.log
(logs) for the updates on those days we can figure out the common culprit.