Installation v10.10 - nearly gets past login

Thanks for adding the bug link james s. But I've no idea what it or the detail behind it means. Also, seems a bit old (2005?). Can you suggest how I act on the advice? Thanks.

I have the same problem as the one discribed here - except I constantly recycle back to the begining and start the process again -- ad infinum. you can stop the cycle only by doing a Alt-F2 (which brings up a program launch utility). One final note- when I stop the process I only show the desktop and walpaper. I can go to the terminal an manually enter a couple lines of code and get the top and bottom drop-down menus back. Once I get it to stop (which sometimes takes several tries) all seems to work well. I tried to look at the machine scripts which according to one forum was located in a file call "rc.local". I do not have such a file. I have a series of files names rc0. through rc (I think 5 - 6). According to the documentation in the files, these are executed at various times. However, I don't know where to look for the files I need. I am certain some sort of error message is being generated somewhere in some logging file - but again I have no idea where to look. Finally it is acting as if a recursive If statement is being executed and some condition is not being satisfied (like forgeting to incriment in a for loop!). Again I have no idea where to even start searching or how to test or check critical points. In truth, I don't even know the order of execution. I had 6.06 and 8.04 on this machine and had no trouble. I am considering installing 10.10 on the same machine as 8.04 and seeing if I can boot into 8.04 and issue some command to switch to 10.10 (like you used to bank switch on the Apple 2C 128K machines). Can you install more than one version of ubuntu on one machine and then switch between the two versions - is this a possible workaround? I am familiar with other OS systems - but ubuntu is new to me and I feel like a new student on the first day of school. Can anyone point me at some reference materials?

  I hope I did not hurt you finding the soiution to your specific problem. I added my problem to yours because I felt they were variations of the same root cause - I am still searching the various forums and If I find anything that helps us I will return and give you the link to the information I found. If I could do more than that - I would! Maybe together, we can crack this nut!

  I hope I did not hurt you finding the soiution to your specific problem. I added my problem to yours because I felt they were variations of the same root cause - I am still searching the various forums and If I find anything that helps us I will return and give you the link to the information I found. If I could do more than that - I would! Maybe together, we can crack this nut!

No prob James. I'm afraid I'm no use here, your explanation is waaaaaaaaay too technical for me. I just installed as I was instructed, rebooted as asked and am now sat staring at what I assume is the wallpaper for the desktop. Never ran Ubuntu before, no technical knowledge of this or any other op sys. I'm on my own here and feeling like I've just signed an old PC's death warrant.

Maybe you can change your screen resolution to a lower value.
Type Ctl-Alt-T to pop up a terminal.
At the command prompt, enter
gksudo gnome-display-properties

You should get a screen resolution in the upper right corner, try reducing it.
If that doesn't help, try getting updates.

gksudo update-manager
check
Install

Good Luck

Your issue has nothing to do with rc files, which are used for system init. It seems Gnome desktop is failing to start.
Not in my expertise field. You could open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F1), run startx and see at error messages.

Ubfan - thanks for the tip - unfortunately Ctl-Alt_T does nothing - no response. How do I get updates if the PC is not responding at all? (I'm posting this on another PC) Can I download them, burn them on a CD and apply? From where?

delance - thanks also. Ctrl-Alt-F1 brings login prompt. After login I typed the 'startx' command and got the following (re-typed here)

martin@martin-satellite-M40:~$ startx

Fatal server error:
Server is already active for display 0
   If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock and start again
Please consult the X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help
ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log

Any ideas what I should try next?

Since you can log into the virtual terminals (Ctrl-Alt-F1), try and remove all the .gnome directories, and the .config/gnome* files/dirs too. Note the dot in front of the names.
rm .gnome*
rm .config/gnome*

Also, you could run the updates from here
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Hi Ubfan. Sorry about the delay on giving feedback. I deleted the directories as instructed and it has made no noticeable difference. I have some very old experience of unix so I managed to find the help and eventually delete the directories (rm -r). Hope this is what was intended.

Now I've deleted them and there's no difference I'm looking at the hint to "run updates from here". Where or what is sudo? When I type these commands at the prompt I get a long list of "Failed to fetch...." messages from getupdate, and the following from getupgrade:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Please don't forget this PC has no Internet connection, I can't configure it until I can get it running.

What should my next step be?

Sorry about the -r. sudo (and gksudo which I rarely use) simply run the command as root, and logs the run. The command is available to the first user set up on the system automatically, so if you are running as a later created user, you would have to get that user added to the /etc/sudoers list (never had to do this so check the man pages). I'd try to get connected before trying updates. It would be so much easier than figuring out what packages are needed, downloading them on another PC, and bringing them over to the one needing them. Wired connections generally just work out of the box, so try that, then the sudo apt-get update etc commands.