Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION 11-05-2007 Installation Manual page 940

Local user management can fail for the following reasons:
• The user might have entered the wrong password.
• The user's home directory containing the desktop configuration files is corrupted
or write protected.
• There might be problems with the X Window System authenticating this particular
user, especially if the user's home directory has been used with another Linux dis-
tribution prior to installing the current one.
To locate the reason for a local login failure, proceed as follows:
1 Check whether the user remembered his password correctly before you start de-
2 Log in as root and check /var/log/messages for error messages of the
3 Try to log in from a console (using Ctrl + Alt + F1 ). If this is successful, the blame
4 If the user's home directory has been used with another Linux distribution, remove
5 If graphical login still fails, do a console login with Ctrl + Alt + F1 . Try to start
922 Installation and Administration
bugging the whole authentication mechanism. If the user might not remember
his password correctly, use the YaST User Management module to change the
user's password.
login process and of PAM.
cannot be put on PAM, because it is possible to authenticate this user on this
machine. Try to locate any problems with the X Window System or the desktop
(GNOME or KDE). For more information, refer to
cessful but GNOME Desktop Fails "
cessful but KDE Desktop Fails"
the Xauthority file in the user's home. Use a console login via Ctrl + Alt +
F1 and run rm .Xauthority as this user. This should eliminate X authentica-
tion problems for this user. Try a graphical login again.
an X session on another display—the first one (:0) is already in use:
startx -- :1
This should bring up a graphical screen and your desktop. If it does not, check
the log files of the X Window System (/var/log/Xorg.displaynumber
.log) or the log file for your desktop applications (.xsession-errors in
the user's home directory) for any irregularities.
Section 51.4.3, "Login Suc-
(page 924) and Section 51.4.4, "Login Suc-
(page 925).