Okay, so, I'm not on my regular computer right now, so I don't have much time to explain it. So, I was using my laptop while I was out because I'm using it mainly for media and storage *For media* so I use XBMC to watch movies, anime/cartoons, listen to music, etc. All without internet access may I add *So I can't upgrade with pacman or do anything network-related on the laptop to fix it... If it's required, I suppose I have to wait until Sunday Night when I get back* and XBMC crashed on me. I suppose what I should have done hit ctrl + alt + backspace but I learned that AFTER everything broke, so instead, what do I do? Like an idiot, I use the "killall kdm" command and end up breaking something. It normally restarts kdm after killing it, but not this time. I decided to reboot after nothing happened. While it was booting up, it had quite a bit of things that failed. For one, the SSH daemon I set up earlier today said it failed. Another thing, Syslog also failed, and so did networking daemon as well. Is there a way to see the verbose *I hope I'm using the correct term* again? Like, is there a log in /var ? If so, I'd be able to post more info here.

Also, can someone told me what broke, why, and how I can prevent it from happening again?

-- why --


if that is all you did
power off and reboot

now if programs were running and hard crashed then pid files might have been left on the normal user account
login as root Arch still lets you do that to kde or gnome ( though i am assuming that kde is default )

If that fails login into "single user mode"
It is in the Arch wiki ,and read the logs .