[DONE] user login not working

[pernel]

Made a "fresh" installation of Mageia 6 in a virtual machine. I decided to let the installation process format everything except the home directory from the former mageia 5. All semed ok until yesterday when the login screen for the default user stopped to accept the password in an endless loop. I can login from a remote console (webmin) I can login as root from the login screen and access MCC. From there I tried reset the password which failed, set it to empty -also failed, configure autologin - failed, create a new user account - failed.
I'm using the Mate desktop.
Would be grateful for advice!
Per

[pernel]

A created guest account works to login but this does not help me much.
Per

[pernel]

Unfortunately exactly the same thing happened this morning with another box with a completely fresh ( a few days ago) installaion. Was working ok until yesterday. Same thing there - possible to login remotely with webmin console. Mate desktop. 64 bit system.
Per

[doktor5000]

From there I tried reset the password which failed, set it to empty -also failed

Failed with what error? If you login as root and set a new password for that user via

Code: Select all

passwd username

where username is a placeholder for your username, what happens ?

[pernel]

Sorry, that I was not clear enough. When changing password from the console I get no error message. The password is changed accordingly and I can test it by logging in from the console. With "failed" I was meaning that the graphical login failed, without any error message. I chose the user in the graphical login, wrote the password, and after a short pause with a black screen with som text taken back to the graphical login dialog. Unfortunately this pause is too short to read the message but it begins with

Sorry, but there has been a problem starting your graphical display

The message seems to be similar to bug 17653.
This happens in both my systems since Sunday. I also tried to create new user accounts and passwordless accounts with the same result. A real mystery for me.

[doktor5000]

Well, if the graphical login is already working then "Sorry, but there has been a problem starting your graphical display" doesn't make much sense.
Also as you're referring to bug 17653 it mentions:

[error message] is presented just before sddm login is displayed.

So do you get a graphical login or not ?

[pernel]

Sorry for being unclear. I get the graphical login but the only things that happens after chosing the user and writing password is a black screen with some text (sometimes text, sometimes without) for maybe one second and then I'm taken back to the graphical login dialog. I even tried setting msec parameter

ENABLE_PASSWORD

to "no" but this did not help.
Would any logfile be of help?

[pernel]

Found out myself: logged in with console and tried startx. From the text output with errors I could see the file .Xauthority was not writable. Understood from an old Mandriva working system that this file should be owned by the user but in this case it was owned by root. After chown and chgrp to the proper user it was possible to login through graphics normally.
Now remains the questions:
Why the system changed the ownership of this file a few days ago? msec? I remembered I checked the msec parameters in the period when this happened a few days ago. I don't remember changing any parameters though.
And why this happened with two systems on the same day?

[doktor5000]

Was just about to ask that. This sounds exactly like https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20835

After starting MCC by the user from the menu, then selecting "Hardware -> Configuring the graphic server -> Test -> Yes" after the performed testing the owner of the .Xauthority file of the user will be root. And in the next boot the user can not enter the DE session because of the rights restriction to this file.

Did you maybe run drakx11 and run a test of the X11 configuration on those two affected boxes?

[pernel]

Yes, I tested the graphics setup with mcc on both boxes. So this is a sufficient explanation. However I don't know if I ought to change the status of this post to "solved"or not. It's not really solved, is it?

[doktor5000]

I'd suggest to mark the thread as [DONE], and you may want to comment on the bugreport that you were also affected on two installations, so you can follow on the progress there.