Kevin J. Cummings wrote:
I'd look into the "errors" that happen way before hal
tries to start.
I'd probably force an fsck on the partition that holds /etc because it
looks like your /etc/passwd file is messed up.... Maybe all of your
filesystems.... Then, again, perhaps this is the result of running fsck
on your filesystems after the power failures. You may be SOL if you
were running fsck and took a power hit. If that's the case, a
re-install may be your best bet.
I suspect this might be the case - the second and third cut where only a
minute apart, the machine would have been in the middle of starting up
again.
Do you have file fragments in your top
level lost+found directories?
e2fsck -f says it's clean, lost+found is empty. I tried starting up in
runlevel 2 and although it boots up a lot quicker there are still a load
of errors (mostly concerning missing users or UIDs) and I can't log in.
The most I can do is restart it with Ctrl+Alt+Del.
I don't know what all files are involved in the user database, but
passwd and shadow seem fine? root and my own user are in there.
-Phil