I realize this is opensuse’s forum, but posting this on ubuntu’s support forum is/was a waste of time. The problem should be the same on each OS, I think)
I had Ubuntu set to automatically log me in after 10 seconds or so. I disabled that under the log in screen applet. Now, when I try to log into the GUI, I get an error that says “Error Starting conversation with authentication (authorization?) service” and I’m locked out. I can, under recovery mode, log in, but I’m locked out of the GUI.
When you think this is distribution indepent youu may fail. In opnSUSE we do nit have just ‘the GUI’ as you mention, but a choice betwen KDE, Gnome and more. So configuring to 'log in automatic after 10 secs (after what?) may be DE dependent, distribution dfependent. I know one can in openSUSE do an auyomatic login (at least with KDE, but I think also with Gnome), bur I never learned of some timing.
Please explain more from you environment. Which DE, where did you configurethat auto-login, etc.
using a live CD, try checking the ownership and permissions of the
files in your home named .ICEauthority and .Xauthority
those must be owned by you and read/writable by you only, any
other scheme will prevent you from logging in as yourself…
of course, you can log in in “recovery mode” since that uses root
authorizations…
note: most often when those files are screwed up it is because you (or
someone who has no clue and thinks Linux-root is just like
Windows-administrator) logged into Gnome/KDE or other GUI as root…