I created a profile.local on the root. I had tried to set a path variable. Obviously something went wrong with that. Now I cannot login. It just spins at boot up. Yes, I’m a total moron. Please tell me how I can fix this. I’m really pissed.
Basically I need to find a way to delete this profile.local on root. It’s not allowing me to log on. But because I can’t log on, I can’t delete the file. What an idiot.
I have a SUSE 11.1 CD. I’m assuming that’s how I could get in to delete this file?
Most “live” CD’s will allow you to login as root, mount the drive in question and delete the unwanted file. A handy tool you can download and burn from a friend’s computer.
Your install CD is good for this. Choose the maintenance or rescue or how it is call from the first menu. It will let you login as root without a password. Then do as ionmich says. mount the partition where /home is in, etc.
But may be this is not needed. I suppose your system boots normaly, it only does not let you login. Use Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to the logical console, login as root there and remove the culprit. After logout use Ctrl-Alt-F7 to get back to your graphical login screen.
I was able to login as root within the Rescue System. The culprit was /etc/profile.local but I don’t see that anymore. Is that because it’s only available to your local home? I am able to see profile, which never got changed. Wouldn’t root have access to the entire file system? Why would I have to mount the home directory?
Basically the system was logging in as the home user name without a login prompt. It seems to be failing at the login. When I try to login as root at the console, it seems to authenticate me and gives the message have fun. But then that’s where it just spins.
This is all traceable to the profile.local I created but I do not see this file anymore.
I’m pretty sure I am going to have to reinstall Linux because when I go into etc/fstab I no longer see a mount for home. If I try mount /home/<username> it says there are no mounts in fstab by that name. I probably should go back to Windows so I can’t do anymore harm 
Also, when I login to the Rescue System.
cd home
ls -l
There’s basically nothing in there.
I am not sure that you followed all instructions given. This may be due to you not understanding them. When you are loged in in the rescue system you are NOT in your own system, but in a system that only exists inside the memory of your box. That means that you will find nothing of what you might have done to your own system. You first have to give the rescue system access to the partitions of your own system.
This must be done by mounting one (or more) of these partitions. For doing this you must have two things:
- Know which partition to mount. It helps when you know which is your root partition (mounted on / ) in your own system. Must be something like /dev/sda2. In the rescue do a
fdisk -l
this might give a clue.
2) You need a mountpoint. Create one with
mkdir /temproot
(almost any name will do, but this seems a good one to me).
When this is clear you can mount with
mount /dev/sda /temproot
Then you can go to the /etc of your system by doing
cd /temproot/etc
in the rescue system. Now check and repair. Shut down the rescue system and see if it helped you.
When in doubt about the above come back here before you destry something
I also suggested login on your own system on the console. Is the second paragraph of your last post pointing to that posibility? Then when it says “have fun” you can then look directly in /etc.
You must see the difference between being in the rescue system afttr booting from the CD and being in your own system after booting it. They are COMPL:ETLY DIFFERENT.
And you have already a new post. I acn not quite cope with your speed 
In the rescue system there will NOT be an entry for partitions of your own system. And there will probably NOT be a entry for /home/<username> in both of the systems.
Please calm down and try to follow what I gave above.
Of course thee is nothing there, it is only a rescue system, not your own!!!
I eventually discovered this fact
So I followed the steps in my SUSE manual to mount the root partition, change root, mount, proc and sys, then all remaining partitions. I deleted profile.local, rebooted, and now I am good to go.
Sorry for the drama and thanks for responding.
Everything is back to normal and I learned a few things.
This is the exact process I followed.
1- logged into recovery system
2- logged in as root
3- mount /dev/sda6 /mnt
4- mount – bind /dev /mnt/dev
5- chroot /mnt
6- mount /proc
7- mount /sys
8- mount -a
Then I had access to the entire file system.
I am happy you found and repaired it. It is alway difficult to assess from a distance what the other party knows, does and sees. In any case you know more now and did the corect things to see your system running as usual again.