I can't login with the console

[Devrethman]

Yesterday my computer decided that KDE was going to stop working (due to a bazillion broken reverse deps of libexpat.so.0 or something). This in itself is a relatively normal thing, I manage to kill X about once a month, but when I exited X (entrance DM) and tried to logon with the console, it won't let me. It gives me the login prompt, I type my username, hit enter, and it waits for about 10 seconds and displays the login prompt again, the password prompt never comes up. I tried this with root and with my normal username, both do the same thing. I have no idea when this started, as I haven't used the since the last time I broke X (about january-ish) or so (I usually use xterms, which worked fine). I remember this happening with the normal console once about a month ago, but I had working X and such, so I did etc-update, and promptly forgot about it. This is really irritating, because I am basically locked out of my computer, I can't use twm or any other WM because none of the ones I have work, I can't install any more, and I can't get into my computer.

Any help greatly appreciated.
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Signature is out for lunch. Feel free to talk to its empty desk.

[yabbadabbadont]

When you are in the grub menu, take the option to edit the kernel line and add the word 'single' to it, then boot. This should put you into single user mode. You might be able to figure out what's going on from there.
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[RaZoR1394]

I'm having the same problem, but mine surfaced when I removed switched to new hardrives and restored from a stage4 backup. I messed it up even more by updating the system. Now I can't even ssh to the box. The only way is to boot with a livecd. It looks like I'm having to reinstall but I'll keep experimenting. I will try the single user trick too.
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[digitalamish]

*bump*

I'm having the same problem. My console just keeps bouncing me back to the login prompt, for all users. I noticed that telnet never gives me the password prompt either. What's weird is that the user ID's are all still there. I can authenticate via IMAP to check my mail just fine, and if I go in in single mode, I can use the root password.

If I boot up in single user mode I can see in the auth.log errors pointing out there is no /bin/login (which there isn't). I'm sure there is a config file that needs updating, but I have like 180+. Can anyone point me towards where this might be coming from? The errors in auth.log look like: