My Login Screen

[DrKebab]

I just got Debian for my laptop and I almost have everything in except my Login screen sometimes shows up and other times it doesn't. Help!

[aicardi]

Lenny, Squeeze, what's there when it doesn't show up?

[craigevil]

I just got Debian for my laptop and I almost have everything in except my Login screen sometimes shows up and other times it doesn't. Help!

More details please.

What laptop, brand, model?
What video card?
What desktop, Gnome, kde, xfce, lxde? Or what window manager?
What login manager; gdm/kdm/xdm/slim ?
What Debian version did you install; stable/Lenny, testing/Squeeze, unstable?

[DrKebab]

iBook G3 Dual USB 500mhz
Video Card: ATI Rage Mobility 128 with 2x AGP
Desktope: GNOME
Login: GDM
Version: Stable/Lenny

[ComputerBob]

@DrKebab,

Is it a coincidence that both you and mickgriddle joined these forums earlier today, and both of you have a Mac laptop that you just installed Debian on, and both of you have a problem with your login screens appearing intermittently?

Are you and mickgriddle the same person?

[DrKebab]

Check IPs nope. We both got Macs from the tech department and I've been following his topic too. His is working but my login screen is not stable. His is though for some reason. Could someone just help me please?

[mickgriddle]

We're clearly not proxied, since we have natural IP addresses.

[ComputerBob]

As a normal user like you, I don't think I have any way to view anyone's IP address, but I'll believe you.

That's certainly an odd problem.

1. Is there any pattern at all to when the login screen fails to appear? Like does it always fail to appear if you logout, but it always appears when you power on your PC?

2. When the login screen does not appear, what do you see instead of it?

[DrKebab]

Thanks,

My screen goes black and just wavers. Sometimes there's a blue line down the middle and sometimes the colors just has spasms across the screen :S

[ComputerBob]

Yikes, that sounds like it could be a hardware problem with your PC. When it happens, try holding down the Ctrl and Alt keys and pressing the F1 key, to see if you can get a command prompt. If you do get a command prompt, then type the word "reboot" (without the quotes) and press <Enter>, to see if your computer reboots. If you can't get a command prompt, then tell us what you see instead of a command prompt.

[oOarthurOo]

Two places to look. Dmesg and the xorg.log in /var/log

Assuming you boot up and fail to get a login screen, hit Alt+F2 to switch to another console. Type dmesg | tail to see the last 10 lines of output. Then head over to /var/log and open the xorg.log file.

[DrKebab]

Yeah I can do all those things. After a few restarts I can login because it will show up after a few restarts but it's not really consistent. Sometimes it will show up and sometimes it just won't be there at all.

I just saw arthur's post, how do I navigate the var/log/ directory? I am going to reboot again to see if I can see the login screen and hopefully be able to navigate it, brb.

[ComputerBob]

Just as an experiment, the next time you DON'T see the login screen, pretend like it's there anyway. Type in the same username (if you're required to do that) and password that you would type in if you could see the login screen.

[DrKebab]

Ok, I'm trying your solution but it's been working my past three restarts

[DrKebab]

Ok, the typing in the user and pass did not work :S

[oOarthurOo]

I just saw arthur's post, how do I navigate the var/log/ directory? I am going to reboot again to see if I can see the login screen and hopefully be able to navigate it, brb.

Navigating in the console?

cd, ls, locate, cat, more, less, grep and nano or vim.

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debia ... ole_basics

[ComputerBob]

I'm not sure where to go from here. Maybe someone else will have a good idea.

I had hoped that even when you couldn't SEE the login screen, that it was still there, but maybe a bad screen connection or some other hardware problem was intermittently causing your PC to lose its display.

But if you can't login unless you can SEE the login screen, that indicates that the login screen itself is intermittently failing to appear -- I'm not familiar with that problem, and I also don't think it would account for the other weird video abnormalities that you see intermittently -- which still sound like a possible hardware problem to me.

Are you sure that you're NOT logging in when you do it "blindly?" Does anything change onscreen after you try to login?

UPDATE: It's been more than 30 minutes since you replied, and it's after midnight here, so I'm going to bed. If you're still here, I hope that someone else will be able to help you.