[ping seanh] Re: log in problem

Ash Wyllie ashw at lr.net
Mon Oct 4 19:30:44 UTC 2010


NoOp opined

>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.

A follow up.

I turned on my laptop, and got the preboot disk scan. I had hoped that something
like that would find unallocated disk space and free it up.

It didn't.

I have a big enough external drive to hold all data on the internal drive. Is
there a way to copy the internal drive (or atleast home) to the external drive?






                         -ash
                         Elect Cthulhu!
                         Vote the greater evil.
                         





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