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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Log on failed after upgrade/install "authetication failed"



JohnVLang
May 20th, 2010, 10:48 AM
Hi,

This has really got me stumped!

I've been using Ubuntu since 6.04, not a linux guru by any means but can usually get myself out of trouble.

So, the issue... I installed 8.04 on my mother's laptop some time back as she was having trouble keeping Win 2000 running (she has a low spec no-name generic laptop btw). I live in Autsralia and she in England, i thought i could better support her if she was running Ubuntu... All has been well with 8.04 but with the new LTS release (10.04) i thought i'd talk her through the upgrade... Did the online upgrade via Update Manager, all seemed to go OK but when she went to log on after restart she got an error saying 'authentication failed' even though we are 100% sure we have the user name and password correct... Tried to do a ctrl+alt+F1 to by pass the GUI log on but couldn't get the terminal session to open up, just got a black screen - no command prompt.

So... thought OK re-install... downloaded the ISO, burned and sent her a CD in the post... talked her through the re-install, all seemed to go well (again) - BUT, after restart, couldn't log in "authentication failed" again...

So, remember i'm trying to talk a novice through all this... any thoughts!?!

If i can get her to log in i can then support her via some kind of remote sesion or other screen share... and it wont cost me a small fortune in international calls!!! :-) But if i can't get a log in, i'm dead in the water!?!?! :confused:

Any help greatly appreciated!

Cheers, John

80aless
June 11th, 2010, 05:01 PM
I read somewhere to run gpg. maybe: just before the authentication let her fire up the tty terminal things, log in as user and launch that gpg command.