ICEauthority error in Ubuntu 8.10

rickklaw · 11-05-2008, 11:41 AM

I get this error whenever I begin the log in process:

Quote:

Could not update ICEauthority file /home/rick/.ICEauthority

Then it doesn't let me log on until I hit "OK"

I tried using this fix but it didn't work.

Quote:

Boot into recovery mode and choose to drop to a root shell. If you don't know how to do that, check out the first half of this tutorial.

Then type
Code:

chown rick:rick /home/rick/.ICEauthority
chmod 644 /home/rick/.ICEauthority
exit

and resume the normal boot. That should fix it.

Since this started, I can't get any sound from external devices (CD, DVD, nor Ipod) and GIMP doesn't work. I can't access any of the logout features using the Gnome desktop option. It all worked initially when I upgraded to 8.10 from 8.04.

(Oddly, internal sound works fine.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

budword · 11-06-2008, 10:08 PM

Can you give us the output of this command ?

ls -l /home/rick/.ICEauthority

The problem is that you don't have permissions to write to .ICEauthority, and those chown and chmod commands are trying to fix that. You have to run those commands as sudo or root, if you use root, and it doesn't look like you did run them as sudo, or root.

I've also had luck simply deleting it, as sudo or root, and then letting the system recreate it on reboot, but changing it is the better solution I think.

David

arizonagroovejet · 11-11-2008, 05:26 PM

Boot in to recovery mode?! Blimey, talk about over complicating an issue.

There is absolutely no need to use recovery mode. If you need to change the ownership of the file then all you need to do is run the chmod command as root. Boot as usual, hit ctrl-alt-f3 to get a text login prompt login as yourself and run

$ sudo chmod rick:rick /home/rick/.ICEauthority
$ exit

The press ctrl-alt-f7 to go back to the GUI login screen.

But I'd just delete the file. There's nothing in there that matters (unless you're actually logged in with a graphical session) and deleting it also deals with the potential situation that the file is somehow corrupt and that is preventing it being updated properly.

If the file is repeatedly ending up as being owned by a user other than yourself then you have a problem somewhere.

crazywalterke · 02-03-2009, 04:47 AM

I was experiencing the same problem,
and after trying to change ownerchip and permissions on the file as said above, even deleting it,
the err. still existed.
So I checked my permissions on my home folder and I saw I could only r en x my files in /home/'username'

so after simple chmod to rwx for my own user name a simple loging created the file again and problem was solved

krishnasut · 11-01-2009, 09:01 AM

I have installed ubuntu 9.10 and face the same problem.
My DVD drive is also being not work properly.
Help ...

nealio · 11-04-2009, 03:38 AM

Hi,
I also recently had this problem with Ubuntu 8.10 after doing an update via UPdate Manager. I think whatever packages were updated may have inadvertantly screwed up my home directory ownership and made both the owner and group of my home directory as root!! However, the permissions for the .ICEauthority file were still correct and both owner and group were still set to my username. The fix that worked for me was:

Code:

mv ~/.ICEauthority ~/.ICEauthority.backup
sudo chown <user>:<user> /home/<user>
sudo reboot

By the way, this problem affected the sound system and prevented all sorts of sub-systems from starting normally. For example the volume control in the panel disappeared.

This kind of thing should NEVER happen and is a great example of "when-things-go-wrong" in Linux they really go wrong - and the average non-techie user will simply give up and go back to Windows.

Good luck!