[Techtalk] I've lost my prompt

[Glen Strom]

Hi all:

Malcolm's suggestion worked. I was able to get into the system 
and move the file /etc/profile.local out of harms way.

I rebooted from the console with shutdown -r now and the system 
re-started KDE normally. I'll have to figure out what the author of 
the profile file *really* meant. ;->

Telsa,
> 
> I was just wondering about "I reboot (I don't know how to do it the
> right way)" and how Glen rebooted, but then, kdm did manage to start.

> (a) Gnome has a logout box which lets you choose whether to log
> your user out of Gnome, whether to shut the box down, or 
whether 
> to reboot it (nicely). I would be surprised if KDE doesn't have
> something similar. 

That's what I did. After I made the new profile file I rebooted the 
usual way when I logged out of KDE (click the shutdown button 
and select reboot. When kdm came back up after the reboot 
everything seemed normal. I typed in my password and pressed 
Enter...and waited...and waited. Nothing happened. It just sat there.

I opened a console with Ctrl-Alt-F2 and logged in as root. The 
system accepted my password, but bash would not give me a 
prompt. I could type in commands without the prompt, but nothing 
would execute.

When I said I didn't know the right way, I didn't mean the right way 
to reboot--I meant I don't know how to restart the system to accept 
the aliases without rebooting.

 
> I am really curious what changes you made in this file, btw. I want to
> avoid them myself :) 

All I did was create a new section for my aliases. I was careful (I 
think) to get the syntax right. Other than that, the file was unaltered-
-except, of course, for the name change.

At any rate, thanks to everyone for the advice. I can live without the 
aliases until I figure out where they should go, but it I found that I 
have a great deal of difficulty living without a command prompt. It 
reduces the functionality of the system to about the same level as 
that of the average NT box (yes, I have issues with NT boxes) ;->



Glen Strom
gstrom at primus.ca