blank screen for new user?!?

[Karl Auer]

I installed 13.10 a month or two ago and have been using it merrily.
Today I wanted to set up a new user for test purposes, which I did
through the settings->users and groups dialogue. Which by the way is a
very poor shadow of the old one.

Then logged out and logged in as the new user - clicked on the new user
name in the lightdm greeter, put in the password, hit ENTER. The
password was accepted, the background cleared to the default Ubuntu
browny-purply thing.... and that was it. The mouse cursor was visible
and could be moved. No icons, no task bars, no nothing. After a minute
or two the update manager opened to tell me that it couldn't update for
some reason, and clicking on "cancel" made that go away, but apart from
that, no signs of life at all. A left-click-and-drag did not mark an
area of the desktop, either.

Did I miss some crucial step? Is the rest of Unity hiding somewhere?

ALT-CTL-F1 got me to a text console where I could log in, but I really
had little idea of what to look for.  "sudo restart lightdm" just got me
back to the same place. Resetting the entire computer just got me back
to the same place.

What may be a relevant section of the greeter log is below. I'm not sure
what "authentication is being referred to here, since the Unix-level
authentication clearly does succeed. I can log in to a terminal window
as my test user just fine.

Any ideas very welcome.

Regards, K.

[+2.24s] DEBUG: Session pid=3470: Setting XDG_VTNR=7
[+2.24s] DEBUG: Session pid=3470: Running
command /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-greeter-session /usr/sbin/unity-greeter
[+2.25s] DEBUG: Session pid=3470: Logging
to /var/log/lightdm/x-0-greeter.log
[+2.27s] DEBUG: Activating VT 7
[+2.38s] DEBUG: Session pid=3470: Greeter connected version=1.8.5
[+2.58s] DEBUG: Session pid=3470: Greeter start authentication for test
[+2.58s] DEBUG: Seat: Setting XDG_SEAT=seat0
[+2.58s] DEBUG: Session: Setting XDG_VTNR=7
[+2.58s] DEBUG: Session pid=3561: Started with service 'lightdm',
username 'test'
[+2.60s] DEBUG: Session pid=3561: Got 1 message(s) from PAM
[+2.60s] DEBUG: Session pid=3470: Prompt greeter with 1 message(s)
[+2.63s] DEBUG: Session pid=3470: Greeter start authentication for test
[+2.63s] DEBUG: Session pid=3561: Sending SIGTERM
[+2.63s] DEBUG: Seat: Setting XDG_SEAT=seat0
[+2.63s] DEBUG: Session: Setting XDG_VTNR=7
[+2.63s] DEBUG: Session pid=3563: Started with service 'lightdm',
username 'test'
[+2.63s] DEBUG: Session pid=3561: Terminated with signal 15
[+2.63s] DEBUG: Session: Failed during authentication
[+2.63s] DEBUG: Seat: Session stopped

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

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