Autologin on lightdm

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Terryphi
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Re: Autologin on lightdm

Post by Terryphi »

Everything was working fine after tweak to achieve autologin but ........ today on boot Mint logo shows then hangs (blank screen) and does not go to login window. Any suggestions?
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Version: LM 21.3 64bit Mate "If something is worth doing, it is worth doing for free."
Cosmo.
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Re: Autologin on lightdm

Post by Cosmo. »

Pjotr wrote:Or request to join that team....
Never! By confirming his previous post in a new one the motivation terminator has closed the door forever. If this continues, it might be at some point not the only door ....

EDIT: Just for the record: I did not request a translation correction; actually I mentioned this in brackets just to describe, why the removal of the official spices names in the dialogs is unfortunate for providing help. (For my own usage I can live with it.) Actually I suggested to bring the official names back, and that has not the least to do with the translators. What followed later may understand, who wants. I would cost me one link to prove, where this person did exactly, what he accused me, but it would bring nothing further.
Last edited by Cosmo. on Tue Jul 11, 2017 6:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
Cosmo.
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Re: Autologin on lightdm

Post by Cosmo. »

Terryphi wrote:Everything was working fine after tweak to achieve autologin but ........ today on boot Mint logo shows then hangs (blank screen) and does not go to login window. Any suggestions?
What did you change after successfully activating auto-login with lightdm?
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Terryphi
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Re: Autologin on lightdm

Post by Terryphi »

Cosmo. wrote:
Terryphi wrote:Everything was working fine after tweak to achieve autologin but ........ today on boot Mint logo shows then hangs (blank screen) and does not go to login window. Any suggestions?
What did you change after successfully activating auto-login with lightdm?
Nothing. It worked through several boots yesterday. This problem arose on boot this morning.
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Re: Autologin on lightdm

Post by Cosmo. »

My first suspicion in such cases is the graphic driver.

Try this:
Boot into recovery mode, to be found in the sub meu of the grub menu. If the grub menu does not appear for you automatically, press and hold a shift key directly after powering on.

After a few seconds you get a menu. Select the first option = "resume". You will be prompted, that some graphics driver will not get properly loaded; confirm it with the Enter key. If the system boots now successfully my suspicion is very mostly right. Open a new thread in this case in the hardware section, as it is not related to this topic.
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Re: Autologin on lightdm

Post by Terryphi »

This problem has been reported by several people in the Blog. I tried the suggested solutions but none worked for me. So I removed lightdm and installed mdm making it the default. Problem solved.

Thanks for your thoughts Cosmo but lightdm seems to be the problem for me. I hope future versions go back to mdm. I am seriously considering leaving my other two machines on 18.1 which works perfectly.
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Re: Autologin on lightdm

Post by Cosmo. »

I had played with auto-login in the beta version of 18.2 and it worked well. I also played with it in an upgraded system, after the upgrade path was open (with having replaced mdm by lightdm), again without issues. Both in VirtualBox, where in all cases the system are kept in their original state, except that I had installed the needed VB guest additions. With this results I cannot reproduce the issue (but it does not mean, that I claim, that they do not exist) and cannot investigate into it. How can one look for a failure, which does not appear?

It would be really of interest to see, if also users with a fresh install of 18.2 are affected by the issue. For now I can only watch, what gets reported here and ask back, if I notice anything of interest. I also observe, if there is anything at GitHub, but until now there is nothing.
TitaniumCoder477

Re: Autologin on lightdm

Post by TitaniumCoder477 »

I am running Linux Mint 19 Tara with MATE desktop, and this worked for me.

Edit lightdm.conf to reflect the following:

Code: Select all

[Seat:*]
allow-guest=true
autologin-guest=true
Additionally, since I was setting up a Kiosk computer, I followed these steps:
  • Create a new template account from which the guest account will revert to on each logon, for example: guest-tmpl
  • Login to that account and customize it to what you expect the guest account to be like
  • Open terminal and type: sudo ln -v -s /home/guest-tmpl /etc/guest-session/skel
(where guest-tmpl is whatever you called your template account)
  • Reboot
The above additional steps will link the guest account skeleton to the template account so every time the guest account logs in, it reverts to the template account settings.

Ref: https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... our-liking

Finally, since I was setting up a Kiosk computer, I added these lines to lock the logon prompt down to just the guest account:

Code: Select all

greeter-hide-users=true
greeter-show-manual-login=false
Just be warned that if you hide the user list AND prevent manual login, you won't be able to login either! The only account that would be able to logon automatically and from the GUI logon would be guest. You would have to use CTRL+ALT+F1 or so to access the CLI and make changes through there and/or temporarily comment out these last two settings to regain access to your GUI. Basically these last two settings are the final ones you'd want to implement for a kiosk machine. Maybe a tad off topic but possibly worth a mention.
PsyPhyGuy

Re: Autologin on lightdm

Post by PsyPhyGuy »

I've been down several Linux rat holes including the ones suggested here.
The lightdm screen does allow a kind of "autologin" but only if I click on the password > or hit return.
Such user intervention requires a screen and mouse or keyboard. Since I want a headless machine that I can use VNC to access this is inadequate.
I want to boot the machine directly into the desktop and skip the splash log in prompt mumbo jumbo.

Any suggestions?
IS there an alternative to lightdm that will allow this?
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Re: Autologin on lightdm

Post by smurphos »

PsyPhyGuy wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2019 5:28 pm Any suggestions?
On all Mint distros using the lightdm/slickgreeter combo it should just be a case of opening the Login Window application and adding the appropriate username to the Automatic Login section. No need to go hunting rats.

Here's the Mint 19.2 version - earlier versions didn't IIRC offer the Autologin delay option.

Image

The related config file is /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf which should look like this.

Code: Select all

[Seat:*]
autologin-user-timeout=0
autologin-user=steve
It sounds like you have set up passwordless login, which is not the same as automatic login. This is controlled by the users membership of the nopasswdlogin group.
For custom Nemo actions, useful scripts for the Cinnamon desktop, and Cinnamox themes visit my Github pages.
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thx-1138
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Re: Autologin on lightdm

Post by thx-1138 »

PsyPhyGuy wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2019 5:28 pm I want to boot the machine directly into the desktop and skip the splash log in prompt mumbo jumbo.
...you don't even need a display manager in the first place in order to autologin,
you can avoid using such altogether - no fluff, bells & whistles or...mumbo jumbo,
crystal clear & step by step instructions courtesy of Head_on_a_Stick here:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=123694

In the specific case of not using (bypassing actually) LightDM,
such also avoids starting / running X as root, that is, if you care about such things...
Other than that, probably almost any display manager out there has an autologin feature,
and smurphos already explained exactly how to do that with LightDM above
(no rats to be hunted or other animals to be harmed during the operation)...
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