Users can't log in unless part of the root group
 

I really hope somebody knows what happened here, and how to fix it...

I'm running FC1, and for the first time since my re-installation I tried to boot into KDE yesterday. I immediately got the "yor session only lasted less than 10 seconds" error, and here's what the .xsession-errors tells me:

/etc/X11/gdm/PreSession/Default: Registering your session with wtmp and utmp
/etc/X11/gdm/PreSession/Default: running: /usr/bin/X11/sessreg -a -w /var/log/wtmp -u /var/run/utmp -x "/var/gdm/:0.Xservers" -h "" -l ":0" "jeff"
mkdtemp: private socket dir: Permission denied

Now I can't even log into gnome. Just the failsafe term or runlevel 3.

So, I tried everything I could think of, like opening the permissions all the way for /usr/bin/X11/sessreg, /var/log/wtmp, /var/run/utmp, and even /var/gdm/:0.Xservers.

Nothing worked.

I logged in as root no problem, created a new user, tried it, and got the same results. I changed my primary user's primary group to root, and I can log in just fine. I checked all the permissions in my home directory (though I did not go any levels lower than that) and they were all owned my the correct user and group; jeff:jeff

So, I assume having root as my primary group starts becoming a security issue, but even if not I'm sure many of you here could see why this will drive me nuts if I dont get it figured out. Any suggestions?

Oh, I might mention that after the failed logins, /var/log/messages give me absolutely nothing to go on. It just shows the session starting for the user, and the next line is the session ending. Argh!!

Please let me know what other info will help ya'll help me...

Thanks as always...

could it be that the permissions on /tmp are screwed up?

Just a thought.

Thanks for the reply, I'll take any thoughts I can get right about now...

I think you may be correct, the perms were a bit tight on /tmp, so I opened it (and everything in it) up with 'chmod -R ug+wx /tmp'

Unfortunately, I am at work now, and I have no idea how to test if this helped or not until I get home. I can ssh into my machine without any of these symptoms, so I don't know how to test it from here. Let me know if you know how I can test it, otherwise I'll check back after I get home this evening....

Thanks again for the reply...

That was it!! Man, I can't believe I didn't check that. I had already deleted everything in the directory, but failed to check it's permissions.

Good call. Thank you oh so very very much!!!!

Jeff