Unable to login to account

**rushikesh988** · November 18th, 2012

I was exploring the terminal commands and I executed this command in the terminal

sudo startx

after that the desktop without unity started so I shutdown my computer from there.

but after reboot I am just unable to login to my account after whenever I insert my password the system just goes blank for few secs shows login screen again.
howeve I am able to login into another accounts (guests) and created the new account as a temp. option.
but please tell me how can I recover my old account...

**Wim Sturkenboom** · November 18th, 2012

I can't help but I wonder why you use sudo in combination with startx? I mean, that way you run your graphical environment as root.

Another question would be if this is a server install? Because usually startx should not be required; ubuntu should take you straight to a graphical environment.

**steeldriver** · November 18th, 2012

Running startx as sudo usually leaves a root-owned .Xauthority file in the user's home dir - which prevents your regular X session from starting up

If you can log in to one of the non-graphical virtual terminals (Ctrl-Alt-F1 and so on) you can probably fix that by removing the offending file

Code:

$ ls -l ~/.Xauthority
$ rm ~/.Xauthority

If that doesn't work you can do the same from the recovery console

Code:

# rm /home/yourusername/.Xauthority

Sometimes there is a ~/.ICEauthority file that causes similar problems

**rushikesh988** · November 19th, 2012

Originally Posted by steeldriver

Running startx as sudo usually leaves a root-owned .Xauthority file in the user's home dir - which prevents your regular X session from starting up

If you can log in to one of the non-graphical virtual terminals (Ctrl-Alt-F1 and so on) you can probably fix that by removing the offending file

Code:

$ ls -l ~/.Xauthority
$ rm ~/.Xauthority

If that doesn't work you can do the same from the recovery console

Code:

# rm /home/yourusername/.Xauthority

Sometimes there is a ~/.ICEauthority file that causes similar problems

worked !!
Thank you so much !!

**rushikesh988** · November 19th, 2012

Originally Posted by Wim Sturkenboom

I can't help but I wonder why you use sudo in combination with startx? I mean, that way you run your graphical environment as root.

Another question would be if this is a server install? Because usually startx should not be required; ubuntu should take you straight to a graphical environment.

As I mentioned I was just exploring