Can you please define the problem more exactly? What do you mean by you cannot
get into Linux? Are you not able to log in at all or is it a specific program?

I cannot log in at all. I type my password (correctly) and the screen
goes blank for a few seconds and then returns to the log in logo with my
name and blank line for a password.

I've seen that symptom before over the years with Linux and UNIX. In
every case it was due to information in the /etc/passwd file re:

1. specified shell is not available (either because it's been deleted
or the partition on which it exists hasn't been mounted), and/or

2. home (i.e., login) directory is not available (either because it's
been deleted or the partition isn't mounted).

Since you cannot login as yourself (or as root due to Ubuntu's policy),
the first thing to do is reboot into single-user mode from the grub menu
and see what's in /etc/passwd at the moment and whether all the info in
that file for your login username points to valid directories and files.

"Something" is going wacky with 8.10; I've read several identical posts
in Usenet's comp.os.linux.* newsgroups and haven't read of any general
solution (yet).

My guess is that something that's been installed after the distro
install is altering "something" on the system due to, perhaps, a race
condition between several processes.

If /home is on its own partition and that partition isn't mounted (for
some reason), the symptoms will be identical to what you report.

I have never seen any report to that effect but I have updated to 8.10
and loaded it onto a clean drive and it has not caused the slightest
problem.

As I said before I would re-install it to overcome the current password
and make sure I remembered just want it was :-)0

And many others are *not* having problems with 8.10 either.

I suspect the problem is caused by additional software added to a
8.10 system after its install.

The symptom points to either/both the /home and/or /usr filesystem(s)
not mounted.


> [...]
> As I said before I would re-install it to overcome the current
> password and make sure I remembered just want it was :-)0


And give root a password to login. It would take only seconds to
login as root and do a "df" to see unmounted filesystems and fix
the problem. I simply cannot fathom Canonical's position on not
permitting a root login -- that stance is at odds with everything
in the Linux/UNIX world. My Ubuntu system definitely has root login
capability even though I haven't needed it since I first installed
7.10 over a year ago (it's now at 8.04). "subu bash" does no good
if you cannot login -- which is what the original poster complained
about.