Several months ago, I set up a hard drive with FreeBSD for the purpose of experimenting with the setup. I set it aside for a while and recently got back to it. I'm using Mate with Slim for the log-in.
Earlier this week, I was logged in on my personal account and the system froze. I forced the machine to shut down by pressing the power switch and then rebooted it. I can log in on that account, but the desktop won't launch properly.
The background pattern shows up, as do whatever files and directories that were there. However, the icons move back and forth and the menu bar doesn't appear. That's about as far as it seems to go.
I can open a Terminal window and look at the files and directories, as well as shutdown and restart the computer, so that part seems to be working properly. On the other hand, I can log in as root (which appears to be intact) and I can look at my account from there.
I don't know what the problem is, though I suspect that something is corrupted or otherwise damaged or missing. I've tried replacing some of the files on my account's desktop (e. g., .Xauthority) by copying their counterparts in root, but that hasn't helped so far.
I could, of course, delete my present account and add a new one with the same name, but that would be as a last-resort brute force method. (There's nothing important except for some configuration files for that account, so I wouldn't be losing anything important if I did that.) However, I'd like to salvage or, better yet, repair or replace whatever is damaged or missing in that account through root.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions as to what I could do?
Thank you.
Earlier this week, I was logged in on my personal account and the system froze. I forced the machine to shut down by pressing the power switch and then rebooted it. I can log in on that account, but the desktop won't launch properly.
The background pattern shows up, as do whatever files and directories that were there. However, the icons move back and forth and the menu bar doesn't appear. That's about as far as it seems to go.
I can open a Terminal window and look at the files and directories, as well as shutdown and restart the computer, so that part seems to be working properly. On the other hand, I can log in as root (which appears to be intact) and I can look at my account from there.
I don't know what the problem is, though I suspect that something is corrupted or otherwise damaged or missing. I've tried replacing some of the files on my account's desktop (e. g., .Xauthority) by copying their counterparts in root, but that hasn't helped so far.
I could, of course, delete my present account and add a new one with the same name, but that would be as a last-resort brute force method. (There's nothing important except for some configuration files for that account, so I wouldn't be losing anything important if I did that.) However, I'd like to salvage or, better yet, repair or replace whatever is damaged or missing in that account through root.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions as to what I could do?
Thank you.
