MX-18 (w/ lightdm) log in as user fails

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Belham
Posts: 25
Joined: Sun May 15, 2016 7:23 am

MX-18 (w/ lightdm) log in as user fails

#1 Post by Belham »

Hi MX Gang,

First, MX is still overall the best distro out there. Have expounded the virtues of both Antix and MX on many a forum. One of those is the Puppy Linux forum, where I am a regular contributor and sometimes a Puppy OS Developer.

I have to ask: have you guys been noticing an occassional developing problem along the lines of (below links) from people posting recently in past 10 months?:

viewtopic.php?f=93&t=48360

viewtopic.php?t=41628

viewtopic.php?t=46818

viewtopic.php?t=45981

viewtopic.php?t=45198

viewtopic.php?t=43722


I'm here to add my voice to the above.

All of the above revolve around "lightdm" log-in issues as user, not root. Root log-in is always allowed and has never failed The above threads (and my thread here) mostly have these two characteristics:

1) nothing is done to the system (no adding ppa(s), no installing anything, no system modifying... just regular updating using the MX Updater)
2) root access is always allowed from lightdm, but "user" log-in is suddenly denied (or rather, x0rg won't start & immediately you loop back to lightdm)...and there is nothing in the /var x0rg log to indicate anything is wrong, no wrong /home permissions, nothing i can see

Trying to rectify the overall problem, I have reset fstab, looked at all permissions in Home Directory, studied logs in /var & not a thing (as mentioned above) is amiss with x0rg loading & starting for both user and root, but it will only start for root, not the user. And this all occurs suddenly out-of-the-blue and all you can remember is an update was recently done using the system tray MX Updater.


I'll be truthful, despite the fact I build and rip apart kernels and also build Puppy OSes, there is something going haywire in MX & I cannot find what it is. Someone HAS to be be seeing this in their system, as a few guys (recently) on the Puppy forum experienced the same thing & private messaged me if I was seeing the same thing. I thought they were nuts until I tried various machines, installed both MX-17 and MX-18, and after awhile, they both started exhibiting this very same behavior.

I will also put out there (just on whim) I completely removed lightdm, reinstalled it, and it solved nothing.

Across my two laptops, four desktops, and recent NUC 8i5 (I am now typing from, using---someone hit me!---Kubuntu), MX goes into this behavior. To reiterate: from lightdm root log-in is always allowed & never fails. But, "user" login just suddenly goes wonky, and no matter what is tried, from terminal and/or what have you, log-in as that previosly accepted "user" is suddenly rejected (ad/or looped, despite all /home directory permissions being correct, and no error messages in /var x0rg logs.

I'd provide ls -l output, or post the /var x0rg logs, but---again--- there is nothing---nada--in them that is amiss. And others above have provided this stuff (in above links). What's worse, is those threads go quiet because people either get frustrated & leave MX, or----GASP (haha!)---they do a fresh install again. I am just trying to understand/find why this issue is occurring & how to fix it. Being from the Puppies Universe and the eternal root/frugal worlds, I refuse to give in and keep doing "fresh" installs of MX to short-term fix this problem. it just eventually re-appears.

Thanks much!


P.S. I also wanted to note, on the Intel NUC forum, no MX-Linux dd-ed ISO will boot, no matter if we try from a dd-ed USB, or external USB DVD-disk. We are reduced to loading/installing MX-Linux in another machine, getting it on a SSD drive as non-UEFI, and then disabling UEFI in Intel NUC, and suddenly the NUCs (after correcting the installed MX-Linux fstab and boot menu entries) will log in to both user and root on the NUC. Hooryay, and success! But, sadly, after an MX-Linux Updater update or two, the user---once again---can no longer log-in from lightdm (the "user" shows, but lightdm will no longer allow booting into the system as that previously accepted "user".) And please know this is the exact same behavior I am seeing across all the legacy BIOS boot computer systems I mentioned above.

I use MX-Linux to get away from being "root" all the time, like I am in puppies ;-) So, I am struggling here what is going on since MX is my go to "non-root" Linux distro. This Kubuntu is, cough, cough, well, you know......;-/.....

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dolphin_oracle
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Joined: Sun Dec 16, 2007 1:17 pm

Re: MX-18 (w/ lightdm) log in as user fails

#2 Post by dolphin_oracle »

In some of those cases linked here, it was due to encryption. in 2 others, it was due to the user messing around with lightdm configuration and not really understanding what was going on. 2 more lost the /home from fstab (which are the ones that bug me the most, because removing things from fstab is kinda a big deal).

We used to see this all the time when users's had used a thunar custom action to change ownership of the home directory to root (which would prevent the user from accessing the home folder on login). It happened A LOT, so we removed that option from mx18, but its still present on the 17-upgraded-to-18 installs.
http://www.youtube.com/runwiththedolphin
lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 - MX-23
FYI: mx "test" repo is not the same thing as debian testing repo.

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anticapitalista
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Re: MX-18 (w/ lightdm) log in as user fails

#3 Post by anticapitalista »

Can you test without ever logging in as root to see if you get this issue?
anticapitalista
Reg. linux user #395339.

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

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https://antixlinux.com

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Richard
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Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2008 10:31 am

Re: MX-18 (w/ lightdm) log in as user fails

#4 Post by Richard »

We used to see this all the time when users's had used a thunar custom action to change ownership of the home directory to root (which would prevent the user from accessing the home folder on login).
I have never used that function.
That could be why I've never had this problem.

Is the date of installation recorded somewhere?
I know I reinstalled MX-18 but for another reason.
Thinkpad T430 & Dell Latitude E7450, both with MX-21.3.1
kernal 5.10.0-26-amd64 x86_64; Xfce-4.18.0; 8 GB RAM
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dolphin_oracle
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Re: MX-18 (w/ lightdm) log in as user fails

#5 Post by dolphin_oracle »

the "change ownership to root" function was particularly problematic because by default, if you don't have a item selected in the thunar window, thunar assumes the current directory is selected. and the placement of the Change owner fuction was such that it was easy to hit accidentally.

the date of install might be recorded on some system file, and the iso date is recorded in /etc/mx-version
http://www.youtube.com/runwiththedolphin
lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 - MX-23
FYI: mx "test" repo is not the same thing as debian testing repo.

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fehlix
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Re: MX-18 (w/ lightdm) log in as user fails

#6 Post by fehlix »

Belham wrote: Tue Feb 05, 2019 8:05 am P.S. I also wanted to note, on the Intel NUC forum, no MX-Linux dd-ed ISO will boot, no matter if we try from a dd-ed USB, or external USB DVD-disk. We are reduced to loading/installing MX-Linux in another machine, getting it on a SSD drive as non-UEFI, and then disabling UEFI in Intel NUC, and suddenly the NUCs (after correcting the installed MX-Linux fstab and boot menu entries) will log in to both user and root on the NUC. Hooryay, and success! .....
As I don't have a NUC, would you mind to help me to identify the issue?
If so could you answer some questions:
1. "... will not boot": Does this mean you cannot even see the GRUB-menu? Or is it, you have got to the Grub Menu,
but when you select to boot MX is will just hang?
2. Is it not booting for both MX 32bit and 64bit ISO's?
3. Could you find out, whether the UEFI-firmware of those NUC's is a 32bit-UEFI or a 64bit-UEFI?
You can find out the UEFI-architechure within the GRUB-menu (when booting in UEFI-mode) by going onto the GRUB-shell command line (press "C"-key) and type "echo $grub_cpu".

Thanks
:puppy:
Gigabyte Z77M-D3H, Intel Xeon E3-1240 V2 (Quad core), 32GB RAM,
GeForce GTX 770, Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB, Seagate Barracuda 4TB

liex26
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Joined: Sat Nov 24, 2018 9:12 pm

Re: MX-18 (w/ lightdm) log in as user fails

#7 Post by liex26 »

I can't speak for any of the other issues, but I'm quite certain my issue was caused by a known problem: User stupidity.

Belham
Posts: 25
Joined: Sun May 15, 2016 7:23 am

Re: MX-18 (w/ lightdm) log in as user fails

#8 Post by Belham »

Hi everyone,

Apologies I didn't reply sooner....just got back home. Need first to do my husband & Dad duties, and then I am going to look at this more in-depth.

Thanks everyone for responding. And, yes, liex26, I entirely entertain "user stupidity", haha, always the first thing I think when something goes wrong in Linux.

Dolphin-Oracle, a huge clue is when you wrote "....17-upgraded-to-18 install." That didn't cross my mind. I've an idea I need to test.

AntiCapitalista, I tried (tested) without logging in as root and faced the same problem. but even when I am root, I can back out of root through terminal, and get into the ""user" I had created (and is already saved), but I cannot get from there to a desktop (user) no matter what I do. First, though, I need to look at what Dolphin wrote, because I am nearly 100% certain (I know I did) each of us came from MX-17 up to 18.

Will post again, hopefully tonight or tomorrow morning.


Thanks again, gang!


P.S. Fehlix, can't get the MX-Linux install-OS recognized on the NUC whether it's on a DD-ed USB or burned ISO to disk. This is true even after going into the BIOS and disabling UEFI and enabling Legacy (but I do know Intel is eventually going to prohibit Legacy BIO booting). Weird thing is all the 'Bunutus ISOs are recognized from a DD-ed USB, Fedora, OpenSUSE, LinuxMint, all booted to begin the install process on the NVME I am installing to (which is currently set up with Grub, 3 simple ext4 partitions, one 16GB swap). Kubuntu and LinuxMint are on the other two partitions. Can't get MX-Linux 18 on the third because the MX-17/18 ISO isn't be reconginzed. Haven't tested any other Debian-based except for MX-Linux, so I wonder if it is just Debian-based ISOs that are the problem?? Re: the UEFI---on recent NUCs are 64-bit only, will look though.

skidoo
Posts: 753
Joined: Tue Sep 22, 2015 6:56 pm

Re: MX-18 (w/ lightdm) log in as user fails

#9 Post by skidoo »

Belham, yes we can notice recurring similar lightDM issues across Debian and Ubuntu also.

Debian Bug report logs - #814760 randomly fails to start

Debian Bug report logs - #776462 session fails to start when .Xauthority is root-owned

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgrepo ... ge=lightdm

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm/+bugs

Maybe it would be helpful to add a routine into the logout(?) shutdown script, providing a warning if any non- user owned files are present in the user's home directory (and check permissions of the ~ directory)... and proactively apply recursive chown to fix.

Belham
Posts: 25
Joined: Sun May 15, 2016 7:23 am

Re: MX-18 (w/ lightdm) log in as user fails

#10 Post by Belham »

I posted here (below link) in leix26's thread how I solved this problem with a bandaid shell maneuver coming into the shell from lightdm that won't boot into the user. Things are working presently and I'll see if the situation holds up as I use programs, run updates, etc, etc over the next week:

viewtopic.php?f=93&t=48360&p=484352#p484352

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