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I have 11.04 installed in my computer, and I decided to install 12.04 from CD in a new partition, but having only one /home partition shared by both systems.

Installation went ok, but when I enter my password the screen turns black and returns to the login screen half a second later.

I can log in as guest. I can also login at the cmd prompt (going to tty with Alt+Ctrl+F1) with my normal user credentials. When logged in as guest I can also install programs using my normal account password.

LinuxIsMyFriend had the same issue, and he answered the issue himself saying

When I created my new user (with the same name as the old one) I got the correct home directory but wrongUID and GID. When I changed it to the correct values everything worked again!

I'd like to do what LinuxIsMyFriend did, but I do not how. My question is, what should I do to set the proper UID and GID in the 12.04 install?

Alejandro Greppi
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2 Answers2

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I ran out that bug this morning, and it seems that I had some file under my /home/ dir wich were associated to root ownership (in this case, .Xauthority and other ones). I changed owner of .Xauthority to my username and it works now.

While I wrote this I saw other similar posts on this website, it's not a 12.04 problem, but the bad guy is always this .Xauthority. Deleting it or changing owner seems working

@see Can't login after installing 11.10

Community
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Tames
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Boot up a rescue cd, which could be Ubuntu or not, then mount both roots, edit /etc/passed of the new version so that the UID of the user equals that of the old version. Do the same with /etc/group. Now you boot into 12.04 you should have no /home directory issue, assuming your passwd is correct. If you are not sure, you can copy the old passwd from /etc/shadow and put in the new version file, while you fixed UID and GID.

johnshen64
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