LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Unable to Get Past Login Screen

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Unable to Get Past Login Screen - Passwords Not Recognized

I received a Ubuntu error message, "Internal Error". When I re-booted, I was presented with a login screen. I could not login, just kept getting the message that the password was incorrect. There is a very brief flash with some error text, but it goes by too fast to read.

Next I attempted to use the recovery option. This did not work out either. FSCK appears to hang. I did receive a message "Supper block last mount time is in the future". I let it run overnight without any apparent progress. I also attempted to enter the command line, once again my password for root was not accepted. So I could not enter terminal mode. Also CTRL-ALT-T did not work to enter terminal mode.

I next used a Live CD (Ubuntu 12.10) and that booted successfully. I ran the disk utility to check for bad blocks, it said that the disk was OK. Also ran "badblocks" on the partition where FSCK did not seem to work. It reported no bad blocks.

I am now looking into how I can boot Ubuntu directly into terminal mode. ie:Edit the start-up process from the Live CD to skip "startx". Based on what I have read, Ubuntu has changed the start-up sequence to "upstart" So that would no longer work (but then I can't get into terminal mode).

Code:

sudo update-rc.d -f gdm remove

Would skipping "startx" allow me to get into terminal mode? What can I edit using the live CD to skip startx" from starting at boot time? Does this issue even appear fixable or should just I do a reinstall?

I am using Ubuntu 12.10 64 bit.

First thing I'd try is:
1. Boot from the live CD
2. mount the HDD installation to some convenient place
3. chroot to the HDD installation
4. change/update your user's password
5. reboot (from the HDD)

On my system it would look like this:

Code:

sudo su -

mount /dev/sda11 /opt

mount -t proc none /opt/proc

mount -o bind /dev /opt/dev

mount -o bind /sys /opt/sys

mount -t devpts devpts /opt/dev/pts

chroot /opt

passwd rockdoctor

exit

reboot

Thanks. It will be a while before I can follow-through due to having to be at work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RockDoctor (Post 4846934)

Your advise worked. :hattip:
I can enter terminal mode as "root" from the Ubuntu recovery screen now.
Before one can use the terminal mode to change files, the following code needs to be entered.

Code:

Mount -rw -o remount /

I also ran the code to re-build the Ubuntu desktop;

Code:

apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

Just as a test. I typed in "startx" in terminal mode and I only got the Ubuntu background wallpaper, no icons. I was able to switch into terminal mode with CTRL-ALT-T from the "blank" screen.

I still am not able to boot into Ubuntu through the login screen normally. Passwords are not accepted (as if they were scrambled). I have not had time follow-up on this yet. There are numerous "hits" for "ubuntu login screen rejects password" that will have to be followed up on. Its getting late. Again, I will be missing the ability to immediately follow-up due to work.

Still have not gotten past the login screen. However there are three updates for now. We used a camera to record the too quick error messages as the login screen cycled. The error message it gave was that Jetty was not installed. But I don't think it is causing the problem.
I found out that you can use CTRL-ALT-F1 to switch from the login screen to the command line. My password works in that situation. Which would tend to confirm the error message below.
At the command line, after logging in, I typed "startx" and received what may be a useful error message, that the keyboard file (xkeyboard-config) may be corrupt. Will have to look into this. How can the keyboard file be fixed?

I may have a match. I received the following error message in the file ".xsession-errors"

Quote:

openConnection: connect: No such file or directory
cannot connect to brltty at :0
mkdtemp: private socket dir: Permission denied

A writeup on this error appeared on Judson's Notes - Ubuntu login screen loop!. From what I could tell, my "libxfce4util.so.6" was in the correct place, though under the additional sub-directory of "x86_64linuxgnu"
I experimented around some, but nothing worked.

I will also have to look into this post: login loop after 4.10 install - libxfce4util.so.6 not found

I have achieved partial success in that I can now login under my wife's account and I get to the Ubuntu desktop. I did get a bunch of Ubuntu "internal error messages". I hope that those will clear-up through further clean-up. Additionally, when logging into my wife's account, the screen goes nuts for a few seconds.

I still can't directly login into my account. To solve that issue, I plan save my user files under my wife's account, delete myself, and then reinstall myself as a user. For now, I need to take a break and fix some real-world issues.

Essentially, I ended up deleting the packages for the Ubuntu desktop, Lamp, Xorg, and brllty. I then slowly reinstalled one by one, but that didn't resolve the login issue until I reset the "/tmp" directory's read/writer permissions.

I guess I will mark this thread as solved since I can login now. Still some clean-up work to do. A new clean install might have been faster, but this was quite an intense learning experience.

If you use phpmyadmin and receive this error message following installation: "Cannot start session without errors, please check errors given in your PHP and/or webserver log file and configure your PHP installation properly.", it can be caused by not allowing your browser to accept cookies from the "localhost". That was my case. Once I specifically enabled cookies, the phpmyadmin login screen appeared. Ironically, the login screen advices the user to have cookies enabled. But that proved difficult since I could not get to the phpmyadmin login screen.

Not My Fault - So I would like to say

Well, it looks like I have an excuse to blame Ubuntu instead of myself for my prior inability to login.
According to this U-Tube video by Quidsup, Ubuntu 12.10 was rated as the worst distribution of 2012. :D

Best and Worst Linux Distros of 2012