Xorg display issues

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Today I had an issue which allowed me to see the login screen from my user, but I was not able to log in. Whenever I confirmed my password, the screen got black and then the login screen restored without me being logged in.

The reason for that was most likely a file called .Xauthority which deals with the display side of things, the Xorg display. That file got messed up by probably a package that I had installed (it was a flatpak package called what-ip).

So in order to solve that issue I did remove that file with rm ~/.Xauthority.

Deleting that should in theory reset the bad formatting and I can confirm that it worked. A new .Xauthority file got created and now I can login into my user again.

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A heads-up, only do this if you have no other option. If say you cannot login at all, and it throws you into a login loop. You have to first press CTRL + ALT + F2 or try any other Fs until you see the TTY (that black terminal like screen). From there login as your user then do the command above. Now reboot with reboot.

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ohh yes, I forgot to mention this. It’s very interesting to learn and good to know that there are usually 7 TTY’s in linux. So usually it should always be possible to talk to your computer by accessing the TTY. You can read more about that here.

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I had the same problem with GNU/Linux Tails (Gnome, and Probably Wayland).

Lucky Me, I found non-technical solution :smiley:

The Login Screen basicly has a two modes: When You are Inserting a Password and When you can see the time :timer_clock:

when i wrote a password and I cann’t login, I use the same ctrl + Fn + F2 or whatever,
and then going to back Ctrl+Fn+F1.

And then I’m trying to switch to The Time Mode in the Lock Screen.

Mouse Click on the User Icon + Hold on and draw mouse down.

and here we are, the time mode, click some-where on the screen.

And we are able to write a password again.