Black Screen after Kubuntu's Graphical Login screen...

Tonight, when I booted up my machine, I logged in as usual but got a bllack screen with a white pointer.

I could get to a console login (Ctrl+Alt+F2) so I issued a shutdown command (sudo shutdown) and tried a recovery option in the grub menu.

The earlier version of Kubuntu did not work either. Same trouble after logging in.

I thought it might have something to do with the desktop profile, and I found this wonderful article.

Thanks to Darling Designs their fix (steps 1, 2, 3) worked for me first time!

Here is a copy of their wonderful article:

Kubuntu 13.04 Black Screen After Login Fix

Recently I upgraded my Kubuntu 12.10 install to Kubuntu 13.04. I had been told this was a fairly smooth upgrade and since I waited a couple of months after the release to do the upgrade, I figured I was in pretty good shape. I was wrong. The upgrade went smoothly enough, but after rebooting I ran into issues. I reached the LightDM login screen with no issues and logged in as normal. I got the pretty Kubuntu splash screen with all the pretty icons. Then I got nothing but a black screen and a cursor. Obviously the graphical components were working, but the desktop was not loading correctly. After some searching online I found that this had become a common problem. It wasn’t necessarily due to the upgrade either. It seems like many other people are having this issue after a more recent update.
After spending a few hours trying various fixes all the way from reinstalling the kubuntu-desktop package to reconfiguring which desktop manager was in use to reinstalling various packages and drivers, I finally tried something quite a bit simpler and met with success.
While looking for answers I stumbled upon a relatively unrelated topic about restoring the default KDE desktop in an older version of Kubuntu. I figured I might as well try that and see what happened even though none of the information I’d come across concerning the particular problem I was having mentioned this as a possible fix. It turned out to be the fix for me though. The problem was a corrupted, or at least an incompatible, desktop configuration. The solution was to simply delete my desktop configuration and let Kubuntu restore the default desktop. This is relatively simple to do and only takes a few minutes. I’ll walk you through the process in the following mini-guide.
1) Once you log in and get to the black screen with a mouse pointer you’ll be at a stand still. You need to get to a text shell instead of the GUI. To do this press Ctrl+Alt+F2. Login with your username and password. You’ll then be at a command line.
2) Lets try the least invasive approach first, removing just the configuration files that concern the KDE appearance settings. Type the following:

sudo rm -rf .kde/share/config/plasma-*

You’ll need to enter your password again for this first command using the sudo prefix. This command should have deleted the configuration files involving the KDE appearance settings.
3) To see if this resolved your problem type the following at the command line:

sudo reboot

4) Once you are back to the login screen, login as normal and see if you have a functional desktop. If so then your problem is fixed. You will have to redo any customizations you had on your desktop as you are now using a fresh default desktop.
5) If the above did not work then you can try removing the entire set of KDE configuration files. Return to the command line with Ctrl+Alt+F2 again and type the following command:

sudo mv ~/.kde ~/.kde.old

This command will rename the directory containing your configuration files. This will allow KDE to recreate fresh files but also provide a backup of the configuration in case you need to restore them. To restore the files you would type the following commands:

sudo rm ~/.kde
sudo mv ~/.kde.old ~/.kde

6) Once again reboot the machine with the following command and login to see if it worked.

sudo reboot

Hopefully one of these methods will work for you. If not, then your problem lies with something other than the desktop configuration files.

Time Incorrect --Showed UTC only...

Oct 13, Thanksgiving

I fixed this by deleting the panel (including the digital clock) and reinstalling the default panel.

Current backup script...

#!/bin/bash -x
# Name: backup_to_SATA6-C.sh
# Source:
# Purpose:call backup.sh without typing the destination
# Date created: July 16, 2014
# Author: DRC

sudo ./backup.sh /media/chad/SATA6-C/backups/
=========================================

#!/bin/bash
# Name: drc_cleanup
# Source:
# Purpose:Clean Trash Can the easy way
# Date created: June 17, 2014
# Author: DRC
echo "this script is called $0"
echo "this trash cleenup script has been started"

sudo rm -rf /home/chad/.local/share/Trash/files/*

echo "it is done"
echo ""


=========================================

#!/bin/bash

# Name: sudo_backup.sh
# Source: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Full_system_backup_with_rsync
# from https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Full_system_backup_with_rsync
# Purpose:to backup important system and data files
# Date created: June 17, 2014
# Author: DRC
#
# Notes: must be run by root
# uses drc_cleanup.sh to erase trash first
# uses installed_packages.sh to create an audit file of the backup
#


echo "let us erase the trash can first"
./drc_cleanup.sh

#echo "start script this way: backup.sh /home/chad/.backups"
echo ""

if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
    echo "No destination defined. Usage: $0 /media/chad/SATA6-C/backups/" >&2
    exit 1
elif [ $# -gt 1 ]; then
    echo "Too many arguments. Usage: $0 destination" >&2
    exit 1
elif [ ! -d "$1" ]; then
   echo "Invalid path: $1" >&2
   exit 1
elif [ ! -w "$1" ]; then
   echo "Directory not writable: $1" >&2
   exit 1
fi

echo "==================================="
echo "this backup script has been started"
echo "==================================="

case "$1" in
  "/home/chad/.backups") ;;
  "/mnt") ;;
  "/mnt/"*) ;;
  "/media") ;;
  "/media/"*) ;;
  "/run/media") ;;
  "/run/media/"*) ;;
  *) echo "Destination not allowed." >&2
     exit 1
     ;;
esac

START=$(date +%s)
rsync -aAXv /* $1 --exclude={/home/chad/.backups/*,/home/chad/Videos/*,/dev/*,/proc/*,/sys/*,/tmp/*,/run/*,/mnt/*,/media/*,/lost+found,/var/lib/pacman/sync/*}
FINISH=$(date +%s)
echo "total time: $(( ($FINISH-$START) / 60 )) minutes, $(( ($FINISH-$START) % 60 )) seconds" | tee $1/"Backup from $(date '+%Y-%m-%d, %T, %A')"

echo "let us create an audit file for the backup"
./installed_packages.sh

backup to another drive...

How to find the destination path to make a backup of your system?

Open the drive with Dolphin. Dolphin will mount the drive if you click on it.

open the terminal console via the "Open Terminal" button in Dolphin.

If you do not see this menu item, add it by right-clicking on the upper
menu area, just to the right of the current menus. You'll see an option "configure menus."

you can see the destination is: /media/chad/SATA6-C/backups