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Olumide
Asked: 2016-11-05 02:37:06 +0800 CST

Can sign in to xfce but not to Ubuntu Desktop environment after update

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I recently updated my Ubuntu 14.04 installation and upon rebooting I am no longer able to sign into the Ubuntu Desktop environment. I've tried several approaches such as:

  1. renaming .Xauthority and restarting
  2. ensuring that .Xauthority is not owned by root (also ran the command sudo chown -R $USER:$USER $HOME now pretty much all the files in my home directory are executable)
  3. sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop and sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop

Content of .xsession-errors:

Script for ibus started at run_im.
Script for auto started at run_im.
Script for default started at run_im.
init: at-spi2-registryd main process ended, respawning
init: at-spi2-registryd main process ended, respawning
init: at-spi2-registryd main process ended, respawning
init: at-spi2-registryd main process ended, respawning
init: gnome-session (Unity) main process (6756) terminated with status 1
init: unity-settings-daemon main process (6735) killed by TERM signal
init: Disconnected from notified D-Bus bus
init: logrotate main process (6631) killed by TERM signal
init: xsession-init main process (6726) killed by TERM signal
init: unity-panel-service main process (6760) killed by TERM signal
init: upstart-dbus-session-bridge main process (6675) terminated with status 1
init: hud main process (6740) killed by TERM signal

And are the contents of /var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log

Update

I tried the fix described here and now the Ubuntu Desktop environment is gone. -- and now I have three desktop environments (including gnome) and only xfce works.

Latest Update

I've installed loads of desktop managers(?) as shown below but only two of them work. GNOME Flashback (Metacity) and Xfce session. The rest don't work.

Final Update

Because my many attempt to fix the system made it worse I eventually had to install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

enter image description here

unity

2 Answers

  1. it looks like you at some point tried to run your xsession as root and this has left some other files owned as root in your home dir.

    to list all the files in your home dir owned by root

    find ~ -uid 0

    have a look at the list and chown anything back to you then try again.

    It might also be a good idea to send this to a file for reference later in case you introduce more issues with later changes.

    If you are happy that all the files listed by that command should be returned to your ownership then run this command.

    find ~ -uid 0 -exec chown $USER:$USER -r {} \;

    It would also be worth creating a fresh user account for comparison, try login in with that, if that doesn't work then the issue may not be at user level but could be a system thing.

    • 2
    1. Please check and post your /var/log/Xorg.0.log and /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old after the failed login.
    2. Please remove x11-common, remove/rename /etc/X11 and install x11-common again.
    3. XFCE does not use expensive 3D effects, so probably OpenGL and or special graphic drivers are not in place. Check graphic drivers for your card.
    • 1