Login loop, can only login as Guest. Ubuntu 12.04

Question

My computer wont allow me to login unless its as guest. I have pressed Ctrl+Alt+F1 and can login using my administrator account there, but not in the normal interface. I have done updates and upgrades from the terminal, and also tried to create a new admin user, and assigned the user to the same group as the administrator account, but cant login to that user either from the normal login screen.

When I login the screen flashes black and then returns to the login screen Is there a way to view an error log file to see what the error is that is returning me to the login screen? How can I do this to figure out what the problem is?

I have also followed instructions on this page Ubuntu gets stuck in a login loop.

It looks like a similar problem, but the fix did not work for me :(

I would like to get back into my admin account and my programs but I am stuck in guest

Solution

I had the same problem. It seems there was some kind of problem in my ~/.profile file. Rename it to something else (so you don't loose it) and try logging in again.

This solved my problem.

Comments

[Web-E]

Have you followed the answer correctly? If you followed the answer, please include the exact commands you have given and the output (if any). Imp. point - chown username:username .Xauthority in this cocmmand you need to replace username with your administrative account name (case sensitive)

[Francois]

My username is Administrator on the pc, there was only an administrator user and a guest option.

[Francois]

I did the command: chown administrator:administrator .Xauthority and it just goes to the next line. If I look at the list of files it does say that the file is administrator, administrator, 0 bytes and -rw--------. When I did ls -ld /tmp I see that it does look like this drwxrwxrwt 15 root root 4096 Nov 30 04:17 /tmp. Should that not also be administrator administrator? I also did dpkg-reconfigure lightdm and that just goes to the next line, so I cant see if anything happens.

[Francois]

Is there a way to see a log file of what is going wrong when it tries to login? Surely then I will be able to see what is failing and maybe fix that?

[K Markey]

You may wish to check your /etc/login.defs and /etc/adduser.conf files if you have changed your uid outside of the limits provided in those configuration files. See this answer

[roy riojas]

This actually helped me, probably a typo in my profile and rendered my linux box unused. Have tried other fixes but this simple one made the trick