[sf-lug] Help needed quickly - willing to pay

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Jason Kirk (jasonedwardkirk at gmail.com):

> I'm an extremely novice Linux user running Ubuntu 11.10 and got a message
> that cannot open session "Ubuntu" but can open my terminal window. This is
> probably a very easy problem for most of you on this list. I'm willing to
> pay/tip for either phone or in person help. I'd come to you of course.
> 
> I'm in somewhat of a panic as I'm in the middle of a job search and
> desperately need to get back online.
> 
> If anyone would be so kind as to call or email me, I'd be most grateful.

Tip of the hat to Shane Tzen for his suggestion that the problem might
be a leftover .Xauthority file in your home directory that X11 (the
graphical subsystem) is choking on.

Of course, that might or might not be root cause of your problem.  Could
be something else.


Suggestion:  You will get better answers if you take the trouble to be
very specific.  E.g., quote any error messages absolutely verbatim.
That means keeping accurate notes, or taking photos using your cellular,
or whatever works for you -- but just a semi-close paraphrase is often
worse than useless, because would-be helpers will Web-search the alleged
error text and find either nothing or be lead down blind allies.


In general:

On any Unixey system, it's in your interest to know how to do all of
these things in order to cross-check things:

o  Login as the root user.
o  Create an additional regular user and login as that user.
o  Start a simplified graphical session for your regular user
   instead of the complex one you usually use (such as Ubuntu's
   Unity / GNOME3 desktop).

The reason these are useful is that they help you isolate what's causing
problems.  E.g., if you can do things as user root and as additional
regular users but not as _your_ user, then the problem must be confined 
to something about your user.

Which, if true, would lead you to suspect a problem with dotfiles
(such as .Xauthority) in your home directory or /tmp.  Which theory
you could then test by doing

[login to your home directory, in a terminal window.]
mkdir saved
mv .Xauthority .gnome2 saved

And include whatever other file looks like it might have created a problem.
Note that this is a non-destructive test, because you can mv the files
back if they're not the cause.

Those tips may seem too much to deal with, at the moment.  However, bear
them in mind going forward, as they'll be very useful in a variety of
other situations you may encounter later.