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toofishes

Developer

From: Chicago, IL

Registered: 2006-06-06

Posts: 602

Website

GDM having trouble writing to authorization file [solved]

Quite a weird error here. If I reboot my machine and start fresh, I have no problems logging in through GDM (started in inittab) and then into GNOME (or XFCE4, really doesn't make a difference which session I pick). However, if I log out and return to the GDM login screen, I get this error upon logging back in: "GDM could not write to your authorization file." (and so on)

If I immediately try to log in again after being back at the GDM login, I am able to log in. I can repeat this cycle, with it always taking two attempts to log in. Console login works fine every time, so it defintely seems to be a problem with the Xauthority file (which GDM is actually making in /tmp/.gdm?????, a bunch of random characters).

When I use another user on the same computer, I cannot duplicate the same problem, even though their GDM Xauthority file is created in the same place.

This one has me stumped, and googling the error message didn't seem to bring up anything relevent to my situation, as I know for a fact I am not out of disk space and I can always log in if I give it a second try after getting the error.

If you want any more info, let me know. The .xsession-errors file doesn't seem to be relevent, nothing really shows up there besides normal status messages.

Edit:
I had permissions on my home directory set to 700, which is a bit too restrictive. 711 works much better and gdm can access the Xauthority file.

toofishes

Developer

From: Chicago, IL

Registered: 2006-06-06

Posts: 602

Website

Re: GDM having trouble writing to authorization file [solved]

Not to bump my own post, but does anyone have any ideas on this? It just seems like a weird bug that is always reproducable, but I have no idea where to dig next to fix it. I don't remember this happening before about a week ago, but I haven't installed any new packages that I can see affecting this.

Edit:
I was looking through the logs a bit more and found this in errors.log:

Oct 26 09:24:18 dublin gdm[2977]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file /home/dmcgee/.Xauthority
Oct 26 11:28:20 dublin gdm[2977]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file /home/dmcgee/.Xauthority
Oct 26 11:28:20 dublin gdm[2977]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file security/.gdm82VFIT
Oct 26 11:34:41 dublin gdm[3805]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file /home/dmcgee/.Xauthority
Oct 26 11:49:03 dublin gdm[3805]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file /home/dmcgee/.Xauthority
Oct 26 11:49:03 dublin gdm[3805]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file :0.0/.gdm1Z8EIT
Oct 26 11:49:13 dublin gdm[4003]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file /home/dmcgee/.Xauthority
Oct 26 11:49:52 dublin gdm[4003]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file /home/dmcgee/.Xauthority
Oct 26 11:49:52 dublin gdm[4003]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file RENDER/.gdmTPCFIT
Oct 26 11:50:01 dublin gdm[4122]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file /home/dmcgee/.Xauthority
Oct 26 12:02:41 dublin gdm[4122]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file /home/dmcgee/.Xauthority
Oct 26 12:02:41 dublin gdm[4122]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file security/.gdmEGNIIT
Oct 26 12:05:53 dublin gdm[4366]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file /home/dmcgee/.Xauthority
Oct 26 12:07:14 dublin gdm[4366]: gdm_auth_user_add: Could not open cookie file /home/dmcgee/.Xauthority

Here is the ls -l on .Xauthority:
-rw------- 1 dmcgee users 0 2006-10-26 12:05 .Xauthority

I think that is what it is supposed to be. However, I really have no idea what those other lines are saying (security, etc). I am thinking that is the file GDM creats in /tmp, but I am not sure.