[clue] mint12 stuck at login screen

David L. Anselmi anselmi at anselmi.us
Thu Dec 15 21:09:11 MST 2011


Mike Bean wrote:
> Little bit lost in the woods, any guidance is appreciated. I'm running
> Mint12, I had thought everything was OK, just used the computer last
> night, but when I try to login in just jumps me back to the login
> screen.

Your session is failing.

You have a display manager (xdm or similar) that takes your name and password.  It runs an X server 
as you, which sets up a session through various mechanisms.  When that exits the display manager 
starts again.

So your session doesn't stick around long enough for you to use it.  The log in /var/log probably 
isn't helpful since X works (you see the display manager).  You might see something useful in 
~/.xsession-errors.

Grant's suggestion to run startx is good, assuming that startx runs your session the same way the 
display manager does.  Shawn's suggestion probably points to the cause of the failure--something is 
broke in the morass of your session config.  Finding the culprit can be difficult, usually you just 
move the relevant directory out of the way (which depends on the desktop you're using).

If you can find an error message googling it will probably tell you where the config is.

Dave


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