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SUSE LINUX Documentation - Index of

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9.4.2 User Cannot Log In—Particular Valid<br />

Username and Password Not Accepted<br />

This is by far the most common problem users encounter, because there are many reasons<br />

this can occur. Depending on whether you use local user management and authentication<br />

or network authentication, login failures occur for different reasons.<br />

Local user management can fail for the following reasons:<br />

• The user might have entered the wrong password.<br />

• The user's home directory containing the desktop configuration files is corrupted<br />

or write protected.<br />

• There might be problems with the X Window System authenticating this particular<br />

user, especially if the user's home directory has been used with another Linux distribution<br />

prior to installing the current one.<br />

To locate the reason for a local login failure, proceed as follows:<br />

1 Check whether the user remembered his password correctly before you start debugging<br />

the whole authentication mechanism. If the user might not remember<br />

his password correctly, use the YaST User Management module to change the<br />

user's password.<br />

2 Log in as root and check /var/log/messages for error messages <strong>of</strong> the<br />

login process and <strong>of</strong> PAM.<br />

3 Try to log in from a console (using Ctrl + Alt + F1 ).<br />

If this is successful, the blame cannot be put on PAM, because it is possible to<br />

authenticate this user on this machine. Try to locate any problems with the X<br />

Window System or the desktop (GNOME or KDE). For more information, refer<br />

to Section 9.4.3, “ Login Successful but GNOME Desktop Fails ” (page 230) and<br />

Section 9.4.4, “ Login Successful but KDE Desktop Fails” (page 230).<br />

4 If the user's home directory has been used with another Linux distribution, remove<br />

the Xauthority file in the user's home. Use a console login via Ctrl + Alt<br />

+ F1 and run rm .Xauthority as this user. This should eliminate X authentication<br />

problems for this user. Try a graphical login again.<br />

Common Problems and Their Solutions 227

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