Login window error ?

[mikelewis]

I am managing an Xserve running Mac OS X 10.5 server. Recently, the login window has stopped working correctly.

As shown in the attachment, the "login box" fails to appear. Rebooting the server fixes this temporarily (so far) but after a while the login box disappears again. I am unable to reboot the server frequently as it is hosting live applications (all of which continue to run normally during this error). Also I'm concerned that eventually a reboot will not fix the problem.

I am able to login via SSH with an administrator account and have tried deleting com.apple.windowserver.plist from /Library/Preferences and killing/restarting just the loginwindow and windowserver processes.

I'm at a loss - any suggestions?

 

[etchtech09]

My experience with a seemingly similar problem was with my Windows machines, but I think it applies. I would check the screen saver and power options to what they are set to, it seems like it is trying to start the screen saver but it fails for some reason.

Also, I would be surprised if you didn't see something in the system logs telling you what was happing.