Autologin with LightDM on Xenial (16.04)

Question

How to setup autologin on Xenial with lighdm from a terminal (i.e. with an editor)?

Here is what I currently have done.

First I created the conf.d-dir which did not exist on my installation:

sudo mkdir /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/

then I added to /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/12-autologin

[Seat:*]
autologin-user=<username>
autologin-user-timeout=0

(using [Seat:*] I took from the Wiki).

However, it does not work.

Answer 1

I know this is over a year old but no correct answer has been acknowledge so I'll add what I did and got it to work based on documentation I've used this configuration and restarted lightdm

$ vi /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/12-autologin.conf

[Seat:*] autologin-user= autologin-user-timeout=0

$ sudo service lightdm restart

Answer 2

Renaming file /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/12-autologin to /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/12-autologin.conf allow autologin.

Answer 3

Could it be you didn't use *.conf as the extension on your file?

As per your reference:

/usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/*.conf
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/*.conf
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

Answer 4

I assume you have entered your own user for the autologin-user=user parameter?

If so, see in /var/log/lightdm/ if you can find any clues.