Can't log in: Black screen, then return to login

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hallo,

when I booted OpenSUSE 11.1 (KDE 4.2 from Factory(?)-Repo) the login screen apeared although automatic login for my only user account is activated.
When I tried to log in, the screen went black for a short time and then I was at the login screen again. Non of the available boot sessions (KDE (failsafe) etc.) worked, not even when I booted in Failsafe mode in GRUB. I cannot even start the command line, the screen wents black and I’m back at the graphical login prompt.
I tried autorepairing the system with the openSUSE DVD. It complained about non-exiisting partition tables of hard drives that don’t even exist, so I skipped them. It checked the base packages and found problems with postfix, cups, hal and another package I don’t remember right now… When it tried to reinstall them it failed at hal because the installation needed “4KB at /mnt”. I only have a /-partition, a /home-partition for openSUSE so there should be enough space for /mnt. When I ran the test again the tool complained about the same packages as before.

Do you have any idea what to do next? I wanted to try to remove /home/frankundfrei/.kde4 but I can’t even reach the command line, plus I don’t know if the problem is even related to KDE…

Thanks in advance,
FrankUndFrei

2

I have a similar problem.

Had a rainstorm and the power flickered briefly. Upon restart, I got the green login scree. Prior to this it logged in automatically. I tried to log in. It went to a black screen very briefly and back to the green login screen. Sometimes when it reverts back to the green login screen I see visual distortions in the screen like there is some sort of resolution issue. I tried installing ubuntu and using its grub menu to log in. Still get the same thing. It really seems to be a video issue but don’t have a vesa login mode to select. I can go to failsafe and get a terminal window.

I have no idea what log files to post so just let me know and I will retrieve them.

3

Maybe the problem in free space on disk.
try:

startx -- :2

or

/etc/init.d/kdm stop
startx

and view results.
In my case, the problem was in free space. Size of zypper.log was 14Gib(!)