serious help needed!

Nils Kassube kassube at gmx.net
Mon Jun 9 20:59:48 UTC 2014


Boudi Luna wrote:
> for some reason after i installed the 32 bit libraries to get second
> life to run on my 64 bit laptop, i was taken to the login screen and
> when i put in my password, it stays in a loop and i can't get it to
> work. it'll take the password, proceed to let me into my account but
> automatically take me back to the login screen. when i use the guest
> account, i can get in but i can't do anything as root. and i need
> access to my main account since all of my documents and whatnot are
> there. what do i need to do? i can't change the password or do
> anything as guest.

How did you install the 32 bit libraries? And which Ubuntu release is 
it?

I don't think it is a password issue because otherwise it would complain 
about a wrong password. As you can use the machine as guest, it is 
surely not a question of missing disk space. I'd rather think it is a 
permissions problem. There are at least two options:

1. You could use Ctrl-Alt-F2 and login there. If that works, it has 
something to do with the GUI setup of your account. Possibly the file 
.Xauthority is owned by root, or maybe some other file. To make sure 
that everything in your home directory is owned by you, you can run the 
command

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER

After that you can return to the graphical login with Ctrl-Alt-F7 and it 
should be possible to login.

2. If you couldn't login, you can reboot. Hold down the shift-key to get 
a boot menu and select the recovery mode. There you can select the root 
shell option and try to correct the problem.


Nils





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