unable to login

[Menyus]

I have an HP dv9000 17" laptop, dual boot Win7/Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64-bit, 512MB nVidia GeForce 8600M GS. Until the last reboot everything worked perfectly, but now, I am unable to get past the graphical login screen. I click on my username, type in my password, the screen flashes a few times and redisplays the login screen. I can go through this process as many times as I wan to. The system doesn't hang but I am unable to login. (Note: I can login using CTRL+ALT+F1.) As far as I now, nothing changed between logins. I only switched into Windows for a short time to use a WIndows app. I suspect the nvidia driver may be causing the problem. So how do I fix this? Please, help. Thanks.

[sunk8]

Do you get any error messages there?

Like 'Authentication Failure' perhaps?

[WorMzy]

Go to a tty (Ctrl+Alt+F1) and log in, then try running 'startx'. Does it cause the same behaviour?

If so, also in a tty, run 'sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*' and then 'startx' again.

[Menyus]

Thanks for the replies.

After login with CTRL-ALT-F1, startx gives Fatal error because there is already an xserver running on terminal 0.

Purging the nvidia driver seemed to work but I still have the same exact problem; that is, after entering my username and password, I cannot get past the graphical login screen.

Unfortunately, there is no visible error messages.

Anymore ideas? Thanks.

[WorMzy]

Sorry, I should have told you to run 'sudo pkill gdm' before you tried 'startx'. Try it again, and see if it shows any errors.

[Menyus]

Thanks again for the suggestions. I am no able to log into my system and use it but not without any hassle. This is what I have to do to be able to use my system:

1. CTRL-ALT-F1 at the login screen to login at the command line.

2. Establish path: PATH="..."

3. Find the PID for the running gdm:

$ pgrep -u root gdm

(Note: on my system, there is no pkill and I coulnd't install it either.)

4. Kill the gdm process:

$ sudo kill -TERM pid_of_gdm

5. Get X started:

$ startx

6. After X starts, I get an "Unlock Login Keyring" dialog box where I have to enter my password.

After all this, the system seems to be running OK but this is going to be a huge pain to have to go through this at every reboot!!! Any ideas how I can fix this? Thanks.

[Menyus]

Additional info from log files on my last login attempt:

Xorg.0.log: no errors or warnings

auth.log:

May 5 12:19:12 UHPdv9k gdm-session-worker[1229]: pam_succeed_if(gdm:auth): requirement "user ingroup nopasswdlogin" not met by user "cnemeth"
May 5 12:19:15 UHPdv9k gdm-session-worker[1229]: pam_unix(gdm:session): session opened for user cnemeth by (uid=0)
May 5 12:19:15 UHPdv9k gdm-session-worker[1229]: pam_ck_connector(gdm:session): nox11 mode, ignoring PAM_TTY :0
May 5 12:19:15 UHPdv9k gdm-session-worker[1229]: pam_unix(gdm:session): session closed for user cnemeth
May 5 12:24:06 UHPdv9k sudo: cnemeth : TTY=tty2 ; PWD=/home/cnemeth ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/kill -TERM 974
May 5 12:24:36 UHPdv9k polkitd(authority=local): Registered Authentication Agent for session /org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Session7 (system bus name :1.45 [/usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1], object path /org/gnome/PolicyKit1/AuthenticationAgent, locale en_US.UTF-8)
May 5 12:24:57 UHPdv9k gnome-keyring-daemon[1897]: PROMPT INPUT:#012#012[prompt]#012title=Unlock Login Keyring#012primary=Enter password to unlock your login keyring#012secondary=The login keyring did not get unlocked when you logged into your computer ...
May 5 12:25:02 UHPdv9k gnome-keyring-daemon[1897]: PROMPT OUTPUT:#012...[transport]#012public=EC120 ... 2#012[password]#012parameter=E7D0...C97AE2#012value=A175...2#012[unlock-options]#012unlock-auto=false#012unlock-timeout=0#012unlock-idle=0#012#012[details]#012expanded=false#012#012[prompt]#012response=ok#012

messages:

May 5 12:25:04 UHPdv9k kernel: [ 940.738591] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready
May 5 12:25:05 UHPdv9k kernel: [ 940.961170] Intel AES-NI instructions are not detected.
May 5 12:25:05 UHPdv9k kernel: [ 941.083147] padlock: VIA PadLock not detected.
May 5 12:25:11 UHPdv9k kernel: [ 947.906364] CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 15000 nsec

Nothing of interest seems to be in the syslog and user.log files

Thanks.

[Menyus]

This is my /etc/pam.d/gdm:

#%PAM-1.0
auth requisite pam_nologin.so
auth required pam_env.so readenv=1
auth required pam_env.so readenv=1 envfile=/etc/default/locale
auth sufficient pam_succeed_if.so user ingroup nopasswdlogin
@include common-auth
auth optional pam_gnome_keyring.so
@include common-account
session [success=ok ignore=ignore module_unknown=ignore default=bad] pam_selinux.so close
session required pam_limits.so
@include common-session
session [success=ok ignore=ignore module_unknown=ignore default=bad] pam_selinux.so open
session optional pam_gnome_keyring.so auto_start
@include common-password

[Menyus]

/etc/gdm directory content:

cnemeth@UHPdv9k:~$ ls -al /etc/gdm
total 68
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 2010-04-29 05:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 138 root root 12288 2010-05-05 12:25 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 132 2010-04-01 04:07 failsafeBlacklist
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8778 2010-04-01 04:07 failsafeXinit
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4778 2010-04-01 04:07 failsafeXServer
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3157 2010-04-14 23:57 gdm.schemas
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-04-29 05:44 Init
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-04-29 05:44 PostLogin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-04-29 05:44 PostSession
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2010-04-29 05:44 PreSession
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6017 2010-04-14 23:56 Xsession
cnemeth@UHPdv9k:~$

[WorMzy]

Why are you changing the PATH variable? Is it not set by default?

Do

cat /etc/environment

does it return:

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games"

If not, make it say that with a text editor like vi or nano. You may need to type this into a console first:

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games