ICEauthority - cannot update ICEauthority file

[ganna10]

Hi there,

I restarted by computer (running Ubuntu 12.04 32bit) after some updates (do not recall what were the updates) and since then I cannot login. When I try to login, I always get a popup saying: cannot update ICEauthority file /home/jane/.ICEauthority.

I have tried running the suggestions that I have found in these forums but to no avail.. Here is a list of what I have done & the results.

1 - sudo chown jane:jane /home/jane/.ICEauthority
sudo chmod 644 /home/jane/.ICEauthority
did not work as same pop up showing when I tried logging in again

2 - ls -a1 .ICEauthority
cannot check if this is owned by me as I get the error, ls: cannot access .ICEauthority. No such file or directory.

Also when I use TTY and login (successfully), there is the message: No directory, logging in with HOME=/. I think that this might be related to the problem of the .ICEauthority but I am not sure & I do not know how to fix it.

Thanks a lot for the help in advance,
Jane

[ajgreeny]

Looking at the file on my system it shows with -rw------- permissions, ie 600 in octal language, not 644, but I don't think that would make any difference when trying the chmod command.

Try renaming the file from Ctrl+Alt+F1 command line with

sudo mv /home/user/.ICEauthority /home/user/.ICEauthorityOLD

which is one answer I have seen mentioned before many times.

Just out of interest, have you made use of sudo to start graphical applications instead of gksu or gksudo, as that can cause this problem. Srr Root-sudo in my signature for details and explanation of what you should always do.

[ganna10]

Thanks for the reply.

I renamed the file as mentioned below (no error came up afterwards) but I still get the same ICEauthority popup when I try logging in again.

After reading the Root-sudo link, yes I have opened graphical applications with sudo & not gksudo. I now know I won't be doing that again!

[ganna10]

Problem solved!

The home directory was not executable, so the rights were changed so that I could execute it and that fixed the problem.

Thanks.