Can't login via KDM after upgrading to Precise

[Snowhog]

With very few exceptions, NOTHING in a users /home directory should be owned by root. Period. dibl is correct, that your problem is almost certainly the result of root having mucked up your users /home directory. I suspect specifically, your ./.xinput.d directory/contents.

I would do as dibl suggested, and change everything in your user /home directory to your user name ownership. Open a console and verify that you are in your users home directory. If you aren't, cd into it. Once in your user home directory, type:

sudo chown -R username:username

where username is your username you log in with. This will change the ownership:group of every directory and file within your user /home directory to you, which is what everything in there should be.

[Montblanc]

With very few exceptions, NOTHING in a users /home directory should be owned by root. Period. dibl is correct, that your problem is almost certainly the result of root having mucked up your users /home directory. I suspect specifically, your ./.xinput.d directory/contents.

I'm very sorry but I have to contradict you. I don't see anything wrong in consciounsly executing a "sudo checkinstall" or keeping root permissions to some files to prevent deleting them accidentally. Files needed to login are okay. I can have anything I want owned by root in my home if I want to, unless those files *need* to be owned by me. None of those files *needs* to be owned by me (especially the .xinput.d folder, which is empty) but for your happiness, I chowned anything in my home and nothing has changed. So this is not a matter of owners of folders and files in my home, period. And let me add that X authorization files are fine. I experienced Xauthority issues in the past, but they were easy to solve. I've never seen a problem like this, that's why I'm going mad like a dog. I'm not a pam expert, all I can see in the logs are errors without a reason.

What I'm getting now, since I found out the nopasswdlogin workaround, is a similar problem, but with no solution.

I know you're trying to help me and I thank you for this, but I should probably stick with with lightdm+nopasswdlogin and just give up...

[Snowhog]

Montblanc@

I will moderate my last statement as to files in a users /home directory shouldn't be owned by root. If you specifically put root owned files into your /home directory, then yes, no issues. Under some conditions, root can muck up a users /home directory, and that can/does create problems.

[Montblanc]

Montblanc@

I will moderate my last statement as to files in a users /home directory shouldn't be owned by root. If you specifically put root owned files into your /home directory, then yes, no issues. Under some conditions, root can muck up a users /home directory, and that can/does create problems.

Of course, thanks for the reminder! By the way, it seems I really found something. My password contains a special character, that would also explain why this bug (is it?) was not reproducible by someone else. I'm changing my password right now. Update asap.

P.S.: Do you have these lines in your xorg.conf?

Section "Files"
    FontPath        "unix/:7100"
EndSection

[Snowhog]

I don't have an xorg.conf file -- my GPU is an integrated Intel, so I don't use/need/require the file.

[Montblanc]

BULL'S EYE! I changed my password to not include special characters and KDM finally recognizes my password!

I think there are some messed up locale/font settings in X, something during the upgrade has gone terribly wrong or... I've just found a bug.

Can someone please try including a special character in his password and try to login via KDM? If this issue happens to be reproducible, I will file a bug on Launchpad.

Thanks again for your support!

[Snowhog]

Someone already filed a question on on launchpad concerning this very problem: kdm 'login failed' with special character password Question #52742. That was back in 2008, and there are no responses to it!

[Montblanc]

Someone already filed a question on on launchpad concerning this very problem: kdm 'login failed' with special character password Question #52742. That was back in 2008, and there are no responses to it!

Thanks for that Snowhog, but you should have expected that: it's my luck, I'm used to it. >

I told a friend that upgraded to Precise on a similar system to send me his xorg.conf, then maybe I'll try commenting out the font lines. I think the problem is that X is trying to read fonts from unix/:7100 which doesn't exist. A diff from an old xorg.conf shows I didn't have those lines in Oneiric. If you take a look at the /var/log/kdm.log I posted in the OP, you will see this line:

[dix] Could not init font path element unix/:7100, removing from list!

[SteveRiley]

BULL'S EYE! I changed my password to not include special characters and KDM finally recognizes my password!

Wow. I'm not sure I would have ever considered this. Especially since I have a "special" character, but granted one that's in the allwed ASCII range

[Montblanc]

Wow. I'm not sure I would have ever considered this. Especially since I have a "special" character, but granted one that's in the allwed ASCII range

Yeah, that's really odd. I tried typing into the username box as suggested by some German users affected by the same problem and I found out that the locale used by kdm and lightdm is set to American. The symbols for each key are different and it's not reading the "Alt Gr" + "key" symbols (I was trying to type a @). So... the password was really wrong, in the end. It seems an X locale issue, because ttys and KDE itself are using the correct locale for my keyboard (it_IT). I don't know how to change that, though. I tried following these steps to tell X to use a different locale, but it's ignoring them. So, I'm looking for a way to accomplish that. Do you have any ideas?

People affected by the same issue are using a wireless keyboard (I'm using a Logitech K800), it's the only thing we have in common. I bought it while running Oneiric, so it's the first distribution upgrade I've ever ran with a Logitech wireless keyboard. If it's a Precise upgrade bug, it's probably related to that.

EDIT: Just filed Bug #995715.