I had been experimenting with Anaconda/Python and decided to remove Anaconda from my system. Which I think I was successful in doing, but in the process it seems a lot of things disappeared and my workstation is now locked into the dreaded Infinite Login Loop. In other words, my workstation is ILL.

I hit CTRL ALT F3 and can login into terminal. Ubuntu 22.04 is still there. I did updates and upgrades, uninstalled and re-installed the budgie desktop, no luck. I looked for but did not find the Xauthority file, which if I can locate this, perhaps I can fix this issue. But I looked in the home directory, where it should be, and there is nothing (so I hope my backup recovery works....).

Any help would be greatly appreciated, this is my primary work computer.

Update: I have located the .Xauthority file, it is in /var/lib/lightdm. But....when I try to navigate to that folder, I get "Permission denied".

I've run through 3 or 4 "Fix Ubuntu Login Loop" procedures; none of them worked. But all of my apps seem to be OK, I think it's only the user that is corrupted. Finally decided to create a new user with admin powers, and restore a backup to the new user. I'm in the midst of that restore process now. I back up every day using Deja Dup, so hopefully I can get back to where I was this morning. We'll see.

It's a hidden file in the /home/user directory so you would need to enable Show Hidden Files in your File Manager.

You generally need root (sudo) permissions outside the user /home directory, at least to move or writ to a file. Glad you got things working.

I did look for it in /home/usr, but it was not there. I did a search and found it in /var/lib/lightdm, but that folder would not let me in, even as root.

The restore process did work, and I am up and running. But this entire episode has been strange, so I will likely do a clean install this weekend and restore again. Just to make sure I've purged all the demons.....

My plan is to do a clean install of Ubuntu 22.04, then Budgie desktop, then the restore with Deja Dup. Any thoughts or advice on this process?

/home/your_name/.Xauthority
Every user has their own Xauthority, each is different and contains a unique COOKIE.
The .Xauthority file is missing for some users who have been logged out, sometimes it is empty.
Note: .Xauthority starts with a DOT, so it is a hidden file.

If you have an old .Xauthority file, you can delete it (before starting X).
XORG will create a new one, with the right contents.

During the upgrade to Slackware 15.0, I made the mistake of copying over from the old system the config files such as .config.
I managed to copy .Xauthority too.
That file is not compatible from one installation to the next, as it records a COOKIE given to that user by XORG.
For me, it caused the startup of XORG to fail, in strange ways, like hanging the startx process and that console for an indefinite time.

Let the new system create a new .Xauthority for you.

Deleting .Xauthority after X is running is also a really-bad-thing to do. That user will no longer be able to interact with their X-session or any of the programs that they have started (because they do not have the matching COOKIE).