7

Well, not sure how I did it, but for some reason I am unable to get past the login screen on Xfce. What's odd is that I had set the machine up (from install) to login automatically. Then when I finish rebooting after installing

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

and

sudo apt-get install vnc4server

all the sudden I am getting prompted for my password. I proceed to type my password (successfully might I add) to login, the screen goes black for a second, then brings me right back to the same password prompt. I am able ssh in(now), but I get no love from workstation login. Maybe vnc4server is the culprit?

What did I do? And can I fix it?

EDIT:

The guest account, however will let me login no problem. What gives? I have a sneaking feeling that this could be permission issue.

EDIT 2:

Also, I did find this form (the exact same setup as I have with same symptoms), makes mention of the .Xauthority file needing to be delete. I don't mind trying things, but deleting stuff scares me a bit.

2
  • Please paste recent entries in /var/log/auth.log
    – ish
    Jun 20, 2012 at 5:31
  • I will when I get a chance to get back to my office. Jun 20, 2012 at 18:11

4 Answers 4

3

For me the only way I can get into Xfce UI is this:

  • Ctrl+Alt+F1 and login as you (i.e using your username).
  • rm ~/.Xauthority
  • Ctrl+Alt+F7 (change to the current X-server tty) and login.

I have to do this EVERY time I reboot. It sucks! I would really appreciate if somebody could find a proper way to fix this.

2
  • did you ever find a fix? chmod-ing .Xauthority didn't work for me.
    – Colleen
    Jan 28, 2015 at 17:49
  • Yes. I upgraded Xfce to 4.12 and it fixed the problem. But then I had to downgrade as my IDE wasn't working properly with 4.12 and now I am back to sq 1. Jun 5, 2015 at 14:07
1

Yep, turns out if you sudo vncserver, it jacks with the .Xauthority file under the /home/user directory. You are only supposed to start vncserver as a user.

Sooooo...

I did sudo chmod 777 /home/user/.Xauthority and there I am able to log in. I did come across some rather lousy literature on creating a new .Xauthority file, but I will dig further until I find something better.

2
  • 1
    Did you run sudo vncserver yourself, or did it happen as part of the package installation scripts? If the installation scripts changed /home/user/.Xauthority, this is a bug, which you should report. If you did sudo vncserver (which you indeed shouldn't), change back the ownership of .Xauthority to you: chown hydroparadise ~/.Xauthority. Jun 24, 2012 at 8:02
  • I did do sudo vncserver. So I am at fault on this particular instance. Jun 25, 2012 at 13:53
1

(Adding this because it might help someone in the future.)

In my case the problem was, that the owner of /home/user/ was root:

user@host:~$ ls -l /home/
total 4
drwxr-x--- 10 root root 4096 Jul 19 16:31 user

So I fixed it by changing the user and group:

sudo chown -hR user:user /home/user/

You might want to change the command according to you username.

1

for everyone that facing this problem firsty just try to remove unecesary package to get free space from Ubuntu tty1 with CTRL + F1 and :

sudo apt-get autoremove

because if your main system partition full system cant write anything so that the problem why you cant login to ubuntu!

same as me, today my Ubuntu failed to login and still cant login event with removing Xauthority

rm ~/.Xauthority

or any tips from interet!

and i just realise that my system partition are totally 0 byte left. and that why!

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