Kernel security update broke GUI login, how to reset stale/caches session info

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

After the latest kernel security update, I am completely locked out of sddm/kde, but ssh still works fine both locally and from a windows box.

The update seems to have changed the Mesa API, (/usr/lib64/dri/i965_dri.so: undefined symbol: _glapi_tls_Dispatch). I built Mesa from latest source configured with “–enable-glx-tls” and the linking problem is fixed. I also built SDDM from latest in an attempt to fix the login problem.

I used xauth to create a new MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key. Didn’t fix the problem.

root user can login to the GUI so it appears to be simply a stale, cached cookie.

Is there an alternative to pam which has some output other than pams 2 word vocabulary “Permission denied”? :frowning:

[17:01:43.191] (II) DAEMON: Initializing...[17:01:43.196] (II) DAEMON: Starting...
[17:01:43.196] (II) DAEMON: Adding new display on vt 1 ...
[17:01:43.196] (II) DAEMON: Display server starting...
[17:01:43.196] (II) DAEMON: Running: /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp -auth /var/run/sddm/{629f81bf-2b13-4558-bf99-ebd515edcfa3} -background none -noreset -displayfd 17 vt1
[17:01:43.259] (II) DAEMON: Running display setup script  "/usr/local/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup"
[17:01:43.260] (II) DAEMON: Display server started.
[17:01:43.260] (II) DAEMON: Socket server starting...
[17:01:43.260] (II) DAEMON: Socket server started.
[17:01:43.260] (II) DAEMON: Greeter starting...
[17:01:43.260] (II) DAEMON: Adding cookie to "/var/run/sddm/{629f81bf-2b13-4558-bf99-ebd515edcfa3}"
[17:01:43.263] (II) HELPER: [PAM] Starting...
[17:01:43.263] (II) HELPER: [PAM] Authenticating...
[17:01:43.263] (II) HELPER: [PAM] returning.
[17:01:43.274] (II) DAEMON: Greeter session started successfully
[17:01:43.282] (II) DAEMON: Message received from greeter: Connect
[17:02:00.434] (II) DAEMON: Message received from greeter: Login
[17:02:00.434] (II) DAEMON: Reading from "/usr/share/xsessions/plasma5.desktop"
[17:02:00.434] (II) DAEMON: Session "/usr/share/xsessions/plasma5.desktop" selected, command: "/usr/bin/startkde"
[17:02:00.439] (II) HELPER: [PAM] Starting...
[17:02:00.439] (II) HELPER: [PAM] Authenticating...
[17:02:00.439] (WW) HELPER: [PAM] authenticate: Permission denied
[17:02:00.440] (II) HELPER: [PAM] returning.
[17:02:00.440] (WW) DAEMON: Authentication error: "Permission denied"
[17:02:00.440] (II) HELPER: [PAM] Ended.
[17:02:00.440] (WW) DAEMON: Auth: sddm-helper exited with 1
#2

I’ll note that I am not having any problems following the recent updates. And a check shows that I am fully up-to-date.

Your problem sounds as if related to incompatible versions.

How do you update?

They screwed up somewhat on the recent Mesa update. If you use “Yast online update” then you would have missed that update. You had to use “zypper up” or use the desktop update applet.

I used xauth to create a new MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key. Didn’t fix the problem.

That should not be needed. Starting X should already have taken care of this.

I suggest that you check your home directory. Make sure that you own it, and own everything under it (including in “.kde4”, “.config” and “.local”. There’s a possibility that your login as root at the GUI messed up some ownership/permissions.

You can also try editing “/etc/sysconfig/displaymanager”. Look at the line

DISPLAYMANAGER="sddm"

and maybe change that “sddm” to “xdm”. See if that gets you in. It should bypass any problems with “sddm”. Note that this is intended as a test and temporary workaround, to help diagnosing the problem.