Setting up for a Novice

[lsemmens]

I've been asked to set up a computer for a friend's father. I'm told he only surf's the net and not much else. Perfect job for Mint! I wish to set him up as a User and his daughter as Admin. So far, so good.

I now have 2 accounts : (names and passwords have been changed to protect the guilty)

Daughter : Name: Mary Password: BluddyGreatLongOne Account: Administrator
User: Name: Fred Password: LotShorterAndEasyToRemember Account: User

To make it easy for him, I want his account to automatically Log in and, hopefully he'll never see a password prompt.

I set him up with a simple password but, despite setting him as Automatically Login in the Login Window. The system stops and prompts for a username/Password at log in, presumably because I also set up an Administrator account, too. What else need I do?

Code: Select all

  Kernel: 4.15.0-45-generic x86_64  bits: 64
           Desktop: Cinnamon 3.8.9  Distro: Linux Mint 19 Tara

Hardware is irrelevant at this time

[rene]

You supposedly configured home directory encryption? Automatic login doesn't work in that case...

[lsemmens]

Supposedly, but, no, I did not, but, thanks for the try.

[rene]

That'll, supposedly again, immediately make this hard to answer because certainly it's not the case that autologin of a "User" user doesn't generally work with both it and an Administrator account configured.

I do notice that you are calling it an Administrator respectively User account, whereas the Cinnamon terminology is Administrator versus Standard. IIRC "User" is terminology from the MATE and Xfce user management tool -- so did you create the user in an odd way? Also, to be explicit, if Fred's UNIX username is "fred", have you typed the four letters "fred" into Administration -> Login window -> Users -> Automatic login / Username? I.e., not "Fred"?

If no resp. yes I give up already...

[lsemmens]

Sorry, you are correct, "User" was a misnomer, He was set up as a Standard, account. Good point about case sensitivity, Off to check that now.

[lsemmens]

Bugga! All is as installed. The Username is correct case. It's still asking me for a username at login.

[rene]

Well, if the user's home directory were inaccessible that would do it. Does ls -ld /home show Fred's home directory to have correct permissions, the same ones as Mary's? And you were still somewhat implicit about case: note that UNIX usernames are lowercase. If you somehow managed to have Fred's UNIX user name be not all lowercase, that may be it.

[EDIT] brainfart; meant simply ls -l /home

[lsemmens]

Thanks rene, that might be it. the all lowercase bit, that is. Too late I re-installed Linux on that system and set it as part of the install to always log on. It was no biggie and I have plenty of other things to take up my time than figuring out how when I can get this box out the door!

Thanks for your thoughts and I will play with that when I have some more time.