Desktop now asks for Password on power up and does not accept it

[windy54]

For a long term I have had a B2 with camera and PIR which i set up as a burglar alarm when I am away for a long time.

Pictures are taken and emailed and a buzzer sounds, it also switches on lights etc.

I have been able to VNC into the PI from anywhere in the world to check the camera.

So I have not installed or updated any software for at least 18 months.

I switched it on at the weekend and it did not work.

When it boots up into the desktop a small window is displayed asking me for the password for user pi, I have typed the correct one and it just asks again.

I cant VNC into the machine because it has not completed the power up sequence.

I cant ssh into the PI , connection is refused.

I can ping the machine.

So something has been corrupted.

Does anyone know of anything I can try, maybe editing a file on the boot menu.

I really do not want to start again.

I have tried pressing combinations of F1, F2 etc on power up as stated on responses to a similar problem.

thanks

Steve

[rpiMike]

Is your pi user still set with the default password 'raspberry'?

[windy54]

No I always change it to the host name I use.

But just in case I tried raspberry,

Stev

[B.Goode]

Could these unexpected boot time events be a consequence of having exhausted free space on the root filesystem?

How about popping the suspect card into a microSD reader dongle and reading it with another working RPi to allow you to check?

Good luck!

[piglet]

Hi.

Does this help? https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 8&t=194764

[windy54]

I will check that and get back to you

Steve

[windy54]

I tried "df -h" and it gave me an error, I could see the boot partition but not the second, so something has been corrupted.

So I have cloned another opencv image and re-installed the software, which was actually beneficial because it has forced me to document the steps!

Thanks for suggestions

Steve