Authentication failed.........login failing (Solved)

Questions about Grub, UEFI,the liveCD and the installer
Forum rules
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Locked
Mad_Sunday

Authentication failed.........login failing (Solved)

Post by Mad_Sunday »

Hi,
I have been running mint 7 for a few days installed on my Dell Inspiron laptop. I have allways used auto login until today (messge to self, if it ain't broke etc.) now when the login screen appears a window pops up immediately saying Authentication failed BEFORE I can type anything. There are 3 periods in the password line? What do I need to do? Clicking the OK button just brings back the message, I have to switch off to get out of the loop.

Pete
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
DrHu

Re: Authentication failed.........login failing

Post by DrHu »

Mad_Sunday wrote:...have allways used auto login until today (messge to self, if it ain't broke etc.) now when the login screen appears a window pops up immediately saying Authentication failed BEFORE I can type anything.
This
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3605925

--OR--
I guess something happened to the user login screen
crl alt F1
--try to login from the command line or reset the user passsword
  • login
    <Enter> key
    --any result
  • startx
    --try to start the xserver, any result
  • gdm
    --start the mint login screen, what result
In teminal (you are there from ctrl alt F1)
passwd
passwd --help
Usage: passwd [options] [LOGIN]

Options:
-a, --all report password status on all accounts
-d, --delete delete the password for the named account
-e, --expire force expire the password for the named account
-h, --help display this help message and exit
-k, --keep-tokens change password only if expired
-i, --inactive INACTIVE set password inactive after expiration
to INACTIVE
-l, --lock lock the password of the named account
-n, --mindays MIN_DAYS set minimum number of days before password
change to MIN_DAYS
-q, --quiet quiet mode
-r, --repository REPOSITORY change password in REPOSITORY repository
-S, --status report password status on the named account
-u, --unlock unlock the password of the named account
-w, --warndays WARN_DAYS set expiration warning days to WARN_DAYS
-x, --maxdays MAX_DAYS set maximim number of days before password
change to MAX_DAYS
highlighted selections might be ones to try..
Mad_Sunday

Re: Authentication failed.........login failing

Post by Mad_Sunday »

OK, the ctrl alt F1 gets me to a command line, logging in is OK too but startx gives "server already active" errors.

A quick edit...........thanks for the link.

After removing that line my system is up and running again. I could not modify the file from either the mint or Knoppix live disks. I booted the new PClinuxOS 2009-2 live disk, logged in as root and opened/modified the file. It re-booted fine.

Thanks again,

Pete
Locked

Return to “Installation & Boot”