GDM thinks I am root

[Kevin Downey]

On 3/23/07, Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus at marcuscom.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 10:38 -0700, Kevin Downey wrote:
> > On 3/23/07, Timur Guseinov <timtch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > try to change your home directory "chsh".
> > >
> > >
> > > 2007/3/22, Kevin Downey <redchin at gmail.com>:
> > > >
> > > > I have a laptop running 6.2-STABLE and modular Xorg, I have been
> > > > having trouble logging in using gdm for sometime, but with the new
> > > > gnome I get a more informative error message (how is that for
> > > > progress). When I log in a little window pops up and says something
> > > > like "cannot write to /root/.ICEauthority" which makes sense, because
> > > > I am not logging in as root so I should not be able to write to that.
> > > > What I can't figure out is why it is trying. Gnome then fails to
> > > > start. If I pick the 'Xclients' session from GDM a little window pops
> > > > up that says 'no Xclients file, launching failsafe terminal' so I get
> > > > a xterm. In the xterm 'whoami' returns 'kpd' (my user) but 'echo
> > > > $HOME' is '/root'.
> > > > Any ideas?
> > > >
> > My home directory is set correctly to /home/kpd (kpd is my username),
> > if I login any other way  I am not given a /root home directory, if I
> > login on the console and put gnome-session in my .xinitrc file gnome
> > starts up fine with the correct home directory
>
> What are the contents of your /usr/local/etc/gdm/custom.conf file?  What
> are the permissions on /etc/passwd and /etc/pwd.db?  You may need to
> ktrace or truss gdm as root when logging in as kpd to see if there are
> any obvious errors there.
>
> Joe
the exact text of the little error box that pops up is:
The GNOME session manager was unable to lock the file
'/root/.ICEauthority'. Please report this as a GNOME bug. Sometimes
this error may occur if the file's directory is unwritable, you could
try logging in via the failsafe session and ensuring that it is.

My /usr/local/etc/gdm/custom.conf is blank because I deinstalled gdm,
deleted all the directories pkg_delete said it could not completely
delete, and reinstalled gdm. Ran a ktrace, but this is the first time
I have used it so I am still trying to pick through the results. gdm
appears to look at the .ICEauthority in the 'kpd' user's home
directory. Then a few hundred lines later it tries the same file name,
but in /root.
-- 
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