A.2.4.3 Login to Encrypted Home Partition Fails
It is recommended to use an encrypted home partition for laptops. If you cannot log
in to your laptop, the reason is usually simple: your partition could not be unlocked.
During the boot time, you have to enter the passphrase to unlock your encrypted
partition. If you do not enter it, the boot process continues, leaving the partition
locked.
To unlock your encrypted partition, proceed as follows:
1 Switch to the text console with [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F1].
2
Become root.
3 Restart the unlocking process again with:
/etc/init.d/boot.crypto restart
4 Enter your passphrase to unlock your encrypted partition.
5 Exit the text console and switch back to the login screen with [Alt] + [F7].
6 Log in as usual.
A.2.4.4 Login Successful but GNOME Desktop Fails
If this is the case, it is likely that your GNOME conguration les have become cor-
rupted. Some symptoms may include the keyboard failing to work, the screen geom-
etry becoming distorted, or even the screen coming up as a bare gray eld. The im-
portant distinction is that if another user logs in, the machine works normally. It is
then likely that the problem can be xed relatively quickly by simply moving the
user's GNOME conguration directory to a new location, which causes GNOME to
initialize a new one. Although the user is forced to recongure GNOME, no data is
lost.
1 Switch to a text console by pressing [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F1].
2 Log in with your user name.
3 Move the user's GNOME conguration directories to a temporary location:
mv .gconf .gconf-ORIG-RECOVER
mv .gnome2 .gnome2-ORIG-RECOVER
4 Log out.
5 Log in again, but do not run any applications.
Help and Troubleshooting 253
