Can't login to Ubuntu/Gnome anymore

[nicholaspaul]

The only 'tinkering' I had done was deleting ~/tmp to free up disk space. Other than that, I have no idea why I cannot login to Ubuntu/Gnome anymore. The error I get is -

Your session only lasted less than 10 seconds. if you have not logged out yourself, this could mean that there is some installation problem or that you may be out of diskspace. Try logging in with one of the failsafe sessions to see if you can fix this problem.

View Details (~/.xsession-errors file)
/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup ...
Setting IM through im-switch for locale=en_CA
Start IM throuh /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/all_ALL linked to /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/default.
mkdtemp: private socket dir: Permission denied

When I try to login to Gnome Safe mode -

Could not open or create the file "(null)"; this indicates that there may be a problem with your configuration, as many programs will need to create files in your home directory. The error was "Failed to create the file '/tmp/gconf-test-locking-file-PFYXJU': Permission denied " (errno = 13)

I can, however, log in to Terminal and via ssh. Any ideas how I can fix this?

[mihaiv]

Does the folder /tmp exists? If yes, which are its permissions? (type ls -l from /) For the folder /tmp there should be full permissions for everyone.

[phidia]

You can create a test user and try and login with that "sudo adduser test".

The first error you posted is usually about permissions you could google that-I'm sure some hits will point back to the forums here.

The ~/tmp directory you deleted was in your home folder?

[nicholaspaul]

It does exist, yes. I recreated it after having these problems. That's the only bit of 'problem solving I did!!

ls -l gives me this result for tmp

drwxrwxrwx

[nicholaspaul]

You can create a test user and try and login with that "sudo adduser test".

The first error you posted is usually about permissions you could google that-I'm sure some hits will point back to the forums here.

The ~/tmp directory you deleted was in your home folder?

Yes, tmp was (and is again) in the home folder.
I tried creating a test user but couldn't login any differently than with the original user.

[phidia]

Yes, tmp was (and is again) in the home folder.
I tried creating a test user but couldn't login any differently than with the original user.

That is NOT a good sign. There is something wrong with the system if you can't login with the newly created test user.

Did you use sudo to remove that directory and if so were you in the appropriate directory/place when you issued the command?

You might try to issue "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade" to see if that will fix this.

[nicholaspaul]

I'm afraid that I may have used sudo, yes. And probably from within Home....
I'll try updating. Thanks!

[phidia]

I'm afraid that I may have used sudo, yes. And probably from within Home....
I'll try updating. Thanks!

Yeah, I hope that works. You shouldn't need to use sudo in your home folder-in fact you can make hidden files there viewable and just delete them by right clicking. That method shouldn't cause any uncorrectable problems.

When in CLI it's important to know what path you are issuing commands for (use pwd).
Well everyone does this so it's not the end of the world and you can back up from a live cd if you can't recover another way.

[nicholaspaul]

Drat. I tried updating and still can't login. Should I try fixing the permissions on /tmp? How would I do that?

[phidia]

/tmp is different from ~/tmp and that may be the problem.

you can compare the permissions on various system files by issuing "ls -la <filename>"

See the wiki here on permissions.