Arch Linux

desperatio

Member

Registered: 2023-11-29

Posts: 2

KDE freezes in login screen after entering password

Hi,

I use KDE and a few days ago I saw that my home folder was full, so I googled and ran some commands to delete some files that would free up space. I used commands I didn’t know about, and just copy-pasted. Not the best idea, I know.  *facepalm* After doing that and rebooting, I run into the issue that my KDE freezes after entering the login-page, typing in my password and hitting enter. I keep seeing my login screen and it’s just stuck there. EDIT: But it *only* freezes after I type in my correct password. If I type in the wrong password it says “Login failed”, as should be.

I can open a terminal tho.

Since I can’t use my laptop properly, if I ought to post journalctl entries (etc), I can only take pictures with my phone and upload them here as is.

I can however backtrack which commands I ran before I apparently destroyed my KDE, and it were the following:

sudo pacman  -Qtdq 
sudo pacman  -Rs $(pacman -Qtdq)$
sudo pacman  -Sc

du —max-depth=1 ~./cache | sort -hr 

df -h 

df -I 

sudo pacman -Scc 

sudo du -sh ~./cache 

rm -rf ~/.cache/*

I ran

 journalctl -p 3 -xb 

and a friend of mine told me there was nothing suspicious there.

I’m assuming the problem is somewhere with deleting some cache files or accidentally deleting files for packages that I need. I assume I would need to re-install and/or overwrite some packages with pacman? Problem is tho when I try to use pacman and I’m connected to the internet via a LAN cable, I run into an error as well.

Help asap much appreciated

Last edited by desperatio (2023-11-29 12:06:26)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,234

Re: KDE freezes in login screen after entering password

Dropping stuff in ~/-cache should normally be somewhat painless but be aware that stuff there will just reappear. and if your made the situation tighter by using your new found space for other stuff you might still simply run into issues with a full /home partition.

That said to properly diagnose this, post the full output of

sudo journalctl -b

after the failed login. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_o … n_services

Symptoms sound like the current mime-cache issues so maybe rule that out first: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 4#p2131634

desperatio

Member

Registered: 2023-11-29

Posts: 2

Re: KDE freezes in login screen after entering password

Nevermind, the thread can be closed. I worked with a friend on fixing the issue, then it turned out that my pacman database was somehow broken, and after running pacrecovery and booting from a boot stick cuz suddenly nothing worked anymore, it turned out that my laptop was running without essential packages like kernel packages, libc and without the fucking arch linux package. I have no idea what happened there but we reinstalled those with help of the boot stick (?).

Anyway, now things kinda work again and topic can be closed.

EDIT: the issue was by the way that KDE doesn’t log you in if you have a full home folder, apparently. But KDE doesn’t tell you that. My home folder was full so that’s why I couldn’t log in. That was easily fixed tho…

Last edited by desperatio (2023-11-30 12:54:10)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,234

Re: KDE freezes in login screen after entering password

That shouldn't generally just happen, check your disk health: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/S.M.A.R.T.#Run_a_test

In any case if you cnsider this [SOLVED] please mark it as such by editing the title in your first post.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,064

Re: KDE freezes in login screen after entering password

Fwwi, the fat DEs have a track record of bad response to unwriteable $HOME, so the explantion checks out.
The broken pacman database is a bit more worrysome, though.

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