Crunch bang Linux login fails

Question

I cannot login to Crunchbang Linux. When I boot the computer, it goes to the login screen, and if I type the correct username+password combo, it goes to a black screen that reads "failed to execute login command" (if the password is incorrect, it rejects the combo correctly).

Booting into recovery mode, it logs me in fine. Once in, though, when I try to startx, it gives me a bunch of errors and fails:

_XSERVTransSocketUNIXCreateListener: ../SocketCreateListener() failed
_XSERVTransMakeAllCOTSServerListeners: server already running

Fatal server error:
Cannot establish any listening sockets - Make sure an X server isn't already running

Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
                at http://wiki.x.org
for help.
Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.

Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 keygiving up.
xinit: Resource temporarily unavailable (errno 11): unable to connect to X server
xinitL No such process (errno 3): Server error.

If I try running openbox-session, I get:

Openbox-Message: Failed to open the display from the DISPLAY environment variable

Some threads I've found have suggested removing /tmp/X0-lock if no X server is running (and none is/was). However, this didn't help when I removed it.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? If it helps, $DISPLAY is empty.

EDIT: I have no xorg.conf file that I can find anywhere. I read that you don't actually need this after x has been setup, but could this be causing the problem?

Answer 1

It looks like a badly configured X server. Try the following:

1. Boot normally. When you are at the login screen hit Ctrl+Alt+F2 (or any other F1-6 key) to drop to a CLI login screen. Login as root and stop the Display Manager. If you are using gdm:

   service gdm stop
   

2. Generate a default xorg.conf file and copy it to /etc/X11:

   Xorg -configure
   cp xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
   

3. If necessary, edit your new xorg.conf file, then restart the login manager and try to log in normally:

   service gdm start
   

If it doesn't work, you should at least get a new error that you can post back here :).

Answer 2

I found out what the problem was. The /tmp partition was only writeable by root, not by the user it was trying to login as. So once I made the /tmp partition writeable, the login worked fine.