When I first installed Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop on this machine the auto login worked fine. Now it does not. I've run some Google searches and I've seen plenty of the typical go to Settings and unlock and ... to enable auto login. But the setting is enabled and was working.
I suspect the issue has to do with having logged into KDE Plasma as the login screen is now the Plasma login instead of the original Unity one. Originally the machine was running Unity3D (the default) but I couldn't get my VNC viewer to work so it was recommended that I use Unity2D. However, before going to Unity2D I decided to try KDE Plasma. I believe this is when the auto login stopped working - I wasn't paying attention to exactly when the auto-login stopped working because I was attempting to solve another more pressing problem.
From what I remember of the KDE install instructions it isn't as simple as apt-get purge kde to get rid of the KDE desktop.
Any thoughts on how to get the auto-login to work again? I have crons running under that user that could be made root crons but I'd rather not.
If you are willing to get rid of the KDE desktop as you mentioned, things should probably work again.
Here's how, from the terminal -- copy and paste!