Fouled up my log-in

[joehenley8100]

Hi,
I need some advice from a log-in expert -- I think.

I installed LM 19.1 Cinnamon a month or so ago. I've been tweaking it and personalizing it. I got tired of struggling with the Cinnamon themes and decided to try Mate. So I added Mate in and started tweaking it abit. I decided I like Mate better, so I removed a couple of the larger Cinnamon packages to save space. --- BTW, I did all the adding and subtracting via the Software Manager. Things went just fine.

A week or so after I did the "clean out" of the bulk of Cinnamon, I had a reason to log out and log back in. Now all I can get is a black screen with what "kinda" looks like a field to enter User ID in the middle of it. If I type in it nothing happens. I can't get it to do anything. I can Ctrl-Alt-F1 and get a text login; and I can do CLI kinds of stuff. But no WM Mate or Cinnamon.

The only clues I have about what I might have done wrong is in the /var/log/auth.log files. It looks like it has been a mess with pam and related stuff. But I am no expert in this area. Can someone please help?

Thanks!

Joe Henley

[Larry78723]

I'm not a login expert but I'm pretty sure that /var/log/auth.log is a required file. If you have an auth.log.1 file, you can try renaming it to auth.log by opening the /var/log in Nemo as root and renaming it

[blueocean]

I think if it were me, I just blow it away and do a clean install with Mint 19.2 Mate. I think it would be better than trying to make Mate out of Cinnamon. That and make Timeshift snapshots before each tweak, so you can recover your system.

[Spearmint2]

What happens if you use CTRL and ALT with F7 or with F8?

[joehenley8100]

Hi,

Ctrl-Alt-F[1-6] all give me tty access. F7 is the graphical log-in I described (blank screen with what appears to be an input location), and F8 I don't recall (think was another tty).

I'm considering a fresh install, but I had success with alot of my tweaks. Hate to give them up.

I'm 99% sure it's all something to do with screwing up the login sub-system when I removed the Cinnamon stuff, but I don't know enough about that to start into it.

Thanks for the feed back so far, I'm hoping someone will come up a silver bullet.

Joe

[Larry78723]

Have you tried logging in thru one of the tty logins?

[trytip]

you can delete manually .ICEauthority .Xauthority it's in your user home directory. use ctrl+H to see hidden files/folders (those are the files/folders with a .dot at the beginning)