autologin issue Xubuntu 11.10 alpha 2

[loukingjr]

I'm not sure but I think this is a compatibility issue between Xubuntu 11.10 and VirtualBox. Everything works ok except I can't autologin. In order to do that one must edit only two lines in the /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf file but try as I might, it doesn't work for me. I don't know if installing the guest additions changed something that only allows me to log in manually or not. It seems to work for others running on metal.

any thoughts?
thanks.

p.s. and yes, I know it's alpha.

[Perryg]

IMHO This is a Ubuntu issue. VirtualBox has no control over the DT manager nor the login. I see this in Ubuntu as well.
LightDM is new and has it's issues as well. Funny thing is on one install it worked but subsequent installs it didn't. Probably worth reporting on launchpad.

[loukingjr]

okay thanks Perry.

[Perryg]

While testing I have install the latest Alpha 2 instead of an upgraded one and set it to auto-login. It does work if you set it that way. I still need to fully upgrade and see if it continues to operate properly though but its late and will not be able until tomorrow, at which time I will reply with the results.

[loukingjr]

thanks Perry. Come to think of it mine is an updated alpha 1. I will get an alpha 2 daily and see how that goes.

edit: Well, I downloaded what I believe is the latest alpha 2 which was from July 5th to try a fresh install. First of all the .iso didn't boot to the grub screen but to the cli and I had to type startx to get to grub. From there I tried both installing directly and going to the desktop first. I tried setting up autologin from the install screen. I took a look at the lightdm.conf file in the .iso itself and the 3 lines everyone said to change were un-commented and set up the way people recommend. If I try to boot the guest with it set at install to autologin it just boots to a black screen and does nothing. If I comment out the three lines everyone has been saying to un-comment in order to autologin, I get the login screen and it works fine from there.

Now you said it works for you and other than the fact I am running the Mac version of VirtualBox I don't think I am doing anything wrong. I have probably set up 100 guests by now and it isn't all that hard or complicated. I am still running 4.0.10 if that makes any difference. Maybe I need to run the 4.1 beta to get it to work. Not sure.

edit: well it seems the reason the .iso dropped into the CLI was because I didn't have IO APIC enabled. Once I did that it was fine but I still can't autologin.

I know quite awhile ago I asked about the IO APIC setting and was told it doesn't really matter if it's set in Linux. Is that still true?

[Perryg]

I saw the CLI at boot as well, but all it took was a second boot. Remember Ubuntu is still in flow and Alpha. I successfully have auto-login with alpha2 after dist-upgrade.

There are actually (3) important entries in the lightdm.conf. See below. There may be more things that need to be changed but I have not located them yet. I can only get it to work *IF I set it to auto-login at install. Changing to auto-login after is hit and miss. Like I said I got it to work once that way and don't remember exactly what all I needed to change.

Code: Select all

default-user=ubuntu
default-user-timeout=0
pam-service=lightdm-autologin

Of course replace ubuntu with your login. As for the version of VirtualBox or the host, I don't see this an issue as far as auto-login goes.

[loukingjr]

I saw the CLI at boot as well, but all it took was a second boot. Remember Ubuntu is still in flow and Alpha. I successfully have auto-login with alpha2 after dist-upgrade.

There are actually (3) important entries in the lightdm.conf. See below. There may be more things that need to be changed but I have not located them yet. I can only get it to work *IF I set it to auto-login at install. Changing to auto-login after is hit and miss. Like I said I got it to work once that way and don't remember exactly what all I needed to change.

Code: Select all

default-user=ubuntu
default-user-timeout=0
pam-service=lightdm-autologin

Of course replace ubuntu with your login. As for the version of VirtualBox or the host, I don't see this an issue as far as auto-login goes.

ok thanks Perry. I tried setting auto-login at install and it just boots to a black screen. I comment out the 3 lines and reboot and get back to the login screen at least. maybe it's just some difference between the Windows, Linux and Mac versions of VirtualBox. I do know some things in the past worked better in the Windows version I was running when I was dual booting Windows 7 and OSX, much to my dismay of course since 99.9% of the time I run OSX.

[Perryg]

I too had a black screen after the first boot once all upgrades had been done. Drop to a tty and run the following:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get -f install

This found several unmet dependencies and once it fixed them the DT came on as expected.

Like I said this is all the guest. Nothing to do with your host or VBox.

[loukingjr]

well, it found 12 pkgs, 3 it refused to install even with the -f switch and now I can't even drop into the tty.