GUI "Authentication failed" 11.0

[Knurpht]

I am on openSUSE 11.0 with kernel 2.6.27.7-9-pae

System has been working well for many months. Today I boot and attempts to login through the GUI as any user (including root) fail, presenting the message:

Authentication failed

However, the machine is running. If I switch to a console using Alt-F1 I can login as a user and su to root. Also, samba is working and a Windows machine can connect to shares as it has for some time.

I have been looking around the net for some way that the GUI might have been configured for a different authentication, such as LDAP, that I am not running. There are many places to find the GUI tools described, but I cannot find one that describes command line configuration.

Do you think this authentication reconfiguration might be the problem? If so, how can I tell and how can I change it?

What has changed most recently is that yesterday I installed the Google Chrome browser. Appeared to install correctly and was working.

Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks.

1.
Log in as a user,

su -c 'init 3'
startx

2.
Try logging in, using a different keyboard.

3.
Did you update recently? KDE/Gnome version?

[pwatson]

It may be a small number of system accounts, but that is not directly indicative of the significant work done using those accounts.

I already have a backup of the user files.

I am going to run through DenverD's list, even the redundant ones.

[pwatson]

1) Selecting Failsafe or Xen produces the same failure mode.

2) Booting to runlevel 3, login as user, su - root, init 5 does present a GUI login screen. However, it also presents the same failure mode.

Booting to runlevel 3 provides a prompt where I am able to login. (Same as I reported before.) Running 'startx' produces a gray (dithered) screen with an X cursor, but nothing else. No icons, no right-click menu, nothing.

I mentioned earlier that I installed Google Chrome on the system during operation prior to the failure. No one else who knows the root password has accessed the machine.

I do have a backup of the most significant files on the system. I trust that you are not suggesting that my not having a recent system backup that I would want to restore is the cause of this failure.

The condescending tone and childish treatment presented here are not making me think that openSUSE is where I should be. You can say all day long that is not what was intended, but it is what I got out of it.

[gogalthorp]

Did you try removing chrome??

You can run Yast from the command line in terminal mode. Log as root or become root with su - command

type
yast

Navigate with TAB key and select with space

[pwatson]

Thanks for your reply. This does work. I could get into yast and remove the google-chrome-* items. When I did so, it wanted to update three other kernel-related items.

Well, it is good that I have already grabbed the significant files. Now the machine will not boot at all. /dev/sda1 not found

Thanks to everyone for their help. I believe my work here is complete.