Stuck in logon loop

Question

Here's the deal. I set up a computer with Ubuntu 10.04 for my grandmother. Everything worked fine. I connected it to the internet at her house today. After rebooting the computer I found that the computer would kick you back to the logon screen if you attempted to logon to her account. It worked fine logging on to my admin account, and also in Gnome's safe mode. I thought it had resolved itself, but turns out it hadn't, and now I don't have physical access to the computer, plus the remote connection I'd hoped to use only works intermittently.

I need some suggestions for troubleshooting for when I'm at her house at some point next week. Ask for any more details, but I'm afraid I won't be able to provide many more until I've checked it out in person, since she is basically unable to use a computer beyond web browsing.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Ideas for debugging:

• Are there any odd applications in session startup (~/.config/autostart) that may be causing a logout by killing gnome-session prematurely?
• Check ~/.xsession-errors on the account after it fails to sign in. There should be details of what's going awry.
• If not, check /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see if X itself is crashing. This is unlikely, as you mentioned that other accounts could sign in fine.

In the meantime, if any of these suggestions don't root up any problems, I'd create her a clean temporary account to use until you're able to resolve the issue.

Edit: This is assuming you have SSH access; it may be a little difficult to relay these instructions over the phone.

Answer 2

The solution for me was to delete ~/.gconf. Had to reset all of the user appearance settings among other things. No idea how it came to be corrupted.

Answer 3

Make sure you have ssh access to your grandmothers PC next time.