Can't login as admin after upgrading from 11.04 to 11.10

Question

All,

I can login using the guest account and i can login using the terminal (Ctrl-Alt-F1). Every time i try to login graphically it accepts my password and attempts to log in. Something fails and then the graphical login screen returns.

I have read that executing the following command sudo rm ~/.Xauthority is supposed to help. Unfortunately, this command just returns 'can't find file'.

I really need to get this fixed...my wife needs to use the computer and get to her files.

Another glitch i noticed is that the shutdown always return the login screen instead of shutting down the computer.

Answer 1

Removing ~/.Xauthority and restarting lightdm didn't work for me either, the file seemed to be immediately recreated every time, however I did 2 things, possibly one of which solved my problem with logging in.

1. I had previously added some custom command to the file /etc/profile, which I removed
2. There was another file ~/.xsession-errors which I removed as well

After that and delting ~/.Xauthority I was able to successfully log in, I don't know which of those things caused it though because I did them at the same time.
Hopefuly this will be useful to you in solving your logging in problem. One other thing I did was to stop some services I had recently installed, but unless it took a long time to take effect that didn't seem to help either, might be worth a try though.

Answer 2

Hmm. This is intriguing; I had exactly the same problem as you, and deleting my .Xauthority file solved it. I'm not sure it will make a difference, but while in your home directory could you try running sudo rm./.Xauthority? Restarting lightdm using sudo service lightdm restart (or restarting your computer) might help too.

If it doesn't, could you post a copy of your /var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log? You might be able to access it using the Log File Viewer, or Nautilus, from your guest account.