[Ma-linux] Please Help: Ubuntu Graphical Login Fails

[Angelo Bertolli]

Keith Bennett wrote:
> Angelo -
>
> I tried creating another user with adduser.  You're right; that did a
> much more complete job.  Alas, I could not log in as that user either.
>
> There are .Xauthority files in the home directories.  All but one are
> empty, though; the one has a size of 196.  Is there any way to verify
> that this file is ok?
>
> By the way, I'm a little confused about the runlevel stuff -- does it
> matter which runlevel is set, assuming that kdm will always restart
> anyway?  If not, can I make the change to /etc/inittab?  And what #
> should I use to have it start up in text mode?
Runlevels are a way to decide which things get started/stopped.  So
since you're using a Debian based system, you can check out the /etc
directory for all directories named rc#.d  So everything that gets
started in runlevel 3 will be in /etc/rc3.d and starts with S.  These
should all be symbolic links to stuff you can start manually in
/etc/init.d/  It's been a while since I played around with it.  To
startup in text mode, I think you should use runlevel 2.  I admit, I
don't know for sure because the machine I use without X doesn't have it
installed, so I use the default anyway.

But just running /etc/init.d/kdm stop should stop X for you, and you can
restart it by running /etc/init.d/kdm start

I think it's a bad sign if .Xauthority is empty, and I'm not sure what
your .xsession-errors mean exactly.  Can you check the permissions on
your user's home directory?  And check to make sure you can write to
.Xauthority?

You can try deleting the .Xauthority file that seemed to have something
in it, and try to login again.  It should get recreated.

Honestly, you really shouldn't be having this much trouble... did
something change or something weird happen to change your system?  Or
did it never work?

Angelo