Log In Problems

This page assumes that you have the password for the user account. For instructions on resetting the password to a known value, see Lost_Password.

This page is about problems that can arise after your user password is accepted. The problem discussed here will have all or most of the following symptoms: If you have only a few of these symptoms, check the section below for your actual problem (however using the fix on this page won't harm anything).
 * an abnormally long log-in time
 * error dialog popups such as:
 * could not update /home/USER/.ICEauthority
 * gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with status 256
 * no panels (but alt+ctrl+t and alt+F2 work)
 * no sound and inability to change sound preferences
 * very few (if any) files beginning with . in /home/USER (check with ls -la /home/USER)

Other Problems That May Look Like This One
adduser NEWUSER and copy over the contents of the /home/OLDUSER directory: cp -Rv /home/OLDUSER/* /home/NEWUSER/
 * If there is literally no space left on the drive (or root partition), log in will complain that it can't access the user's home folder or create certain files then fail. Free some space on the drive.
 * Bad hard drive. Do you hear clicking from the drive? Did it also take a very long time to start ubuntu? Is nothing at all happening for a very long time after log in before the process resolves normally? Back up and replace the drive.
 * No /home/USER folder or /home/USER folder manually created as root or user is not in the right groups. From a root shell, create a new user:
 * Problems with individual daemons or programs. You might want to try reinstalling gdm or pulseaudio, as these are complex programs that are harder to configure than they are to use.
 * If your problem is not listed here or you find an additional solution, please add to this page!

Fix
The permissions and/or owner of the /home/USER directory are preventing programs and daemons from creating per-session configuration files. Check with: ls -la /home The user folders should all look like: drwxr-xr-x USER:USER someDate USER If they do, check the section above for your actual problem (however using the fix below won't harm anything).

Make sure each user's home folder is owned by that user: sudo chown USER:USER /home/USER and that it has read and execute permissions for its own user and other users: sudo chmod 755 /home/user