Could Not Login due to Corrupt .Xauthority

[kubicle]

I read the whole thread, and seems like a weird issue (if Xauthority isn't owned by root when you can't login).

A few suggestions:
Firstly,
You don't need to boot into recovery mode to remove .Xauthority. You can remove it from normal boot:
1. when the login screen is visible, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (to change to a virtual text terminal)
2. login with your user credentials
3. run 'rm ~/.Xauthority'
4. logout from terminal ( "exit" or Ctrl+d)
5. Switch back to the login screen (Ctrl+Alt+F7)

Secondly,
If your home partition isn't mounted automatically when you boot into recovery mode (command "mount" will list active mounts), you can mount it by running "mount /home"

[NoWorries]

I have decided to comment out the line in my .bash_logout that deletes the .Xauthority file and wait for it to happen again and try what you suggest. As there are many updates being made on a daily basis, this problem may be resolved for my system by some related file being updated.

I have noticed that the size of a working .Xauthority file is 50B. When it is corrupted it is about 100B.