Hi all,

I've been using linux/unix now only for a couple of months and was doing ok until about 30 minutes ago...

I needed to reboot into my windows 2000 partition, so, in a terminal I typed:

shutdown -r now

which duly rebooted the PC for me. On getting to the OS selection screen I realised I needed some info from an email on my linux patition, so booted back to linux. When I got to the logon screen (graphical) I put in my user and password details, but it just put me back onto the logon screen! I've tried numerous times to login, typing both username and password very carefully and I still cannot logon to my account.

However, if I press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or F2,F3 etc) and enter my details I find I CAN login under that account! What's going on?!!

As a temporary measure, I logged in as root and created another user account, but I really want my old account back! Does anybody out there know why I cannot login graphically, but am able to do so in terminal mode?

Before all this happened I was just surfing and I also changed the length of time my desktop is inactive before the screensaver starts up, so I can't work out why my account has just died like that.

I am using Mandrake 9.1, I have Gnome ICEwm and KDE installed and normally use KDE - (I've tried logging in using both KDE and Gnome to no avail).

Please help! Thanks in advance for any advice you are able to give.

Confused and dazed...

It's OK - panic over! The account had expired without any warnings - I'd previously accepted default settings for things like user accounts and they only had a 60 day "lease".

Sorry for posting a tad prematurely.

if the event that you ever do get locked out of your Linux box..check out this website and tool.

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tomsrtbt.FAQ documentation
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I am having a similar problem. After fixing a hardware problem, I am not able to login to the GUI, It proceeds as though it will, but refreshes back to the login screen. If I (CTRL + ALT + F1) I can login.

If I use TightVNC I can login to the GUI just fine, but this is posing a problem with what I need to do.

Thanks in advance for the help.


Linux Mandrake 9.2

Are you trying to log is as root?

I'm not sure in which version they introduced it, but at some point Mandrake changed their default settings so that root could not log into the GUI.
Have a look through your settings in mcc.

Actually, all accounts. As root, I was able to before. Also There are quite a few accounts that are now visible at the log screen that previously were not available before.

Example:
adm
bin
admin
games
etc...............

There are about 25 newly visible accounts.