could not update ICEauthority, problem with the configuration server, .nautilus error

[Redsandro]

Late edit: Problem solved. You cannot have an encrypted home directory and auto-login at the same time. If your problem is similar but different it probably involves having an ecrypted home dir and some features that are not compatible with it.

Original first post follows.
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After updates I could not boot normal anymore (freeze right after GRUB). I booted into recovery mode, rebooted, and it worked again. But ever since, I get the following message:

"could not update ICEauthority file"

It is already owned by me with 600 permissions. I tried setting it to 644 but it doesn't change a thing.

When I press close, the next message pops up:

"There is a problem with the configuration server.
(/usr/lib/libgconf2-4/gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with status 256)"

When I press close, the next message pops up:

"Nautilus could not create the following required folders: /home/user/Desktop, /home/user/.nautilus.
Before running Nautilus, please create these folders, or set permissions such that Nautilus can create them."

But those folders already exists as me:me 755.

A few times after closing all these messages my desktop would appear normally and everything worked. But now I don't get past the empty desktop with a mouse cursor anymore. So I am in trouble.

[ticthak@AOL.com]

running into a similar problem w/ almost all significant updates, I at least can access a DE (defaults to Gnome right now) by using the recovery boot into a root console- I "su" w/o a password, then "startx"

~$: su
~$: startx

[Redsandro]

Yes me too, I can recovery boot and do some stuff to start Gnome. But one time it crashed in the menu where my keyboard wouldn't type anything other than ">". I ctrl+als+F3'ed to tty3 and I could normally start Gnome from there.

What is the last change you remember since you had this problem? I remember I chose to automatically login my user, did some updates and shut down my computer.

[drs305]

There are several bug reports about similar occurrences. Each of your posts have at least one mention of similar behavior.

Solutions varied, but each of these worked for at least one individual:

sudo chmod a+rwx /tmp

Deleting files because the partition was full. Added: One user mentioned his /tmp was full, but perhaps he had a separate partition or poorly worded the post.

Disabling automatic login.

I can't vouch that any will work, but you can look through the bug report for yourself. The report goes back quite a way, so I'd concentrate on posts from the past several months.

Good luck to all of you.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...nf/+bug/269215

[Redsandro]

Thanks for mentioning this.
However, my /tmp is 777 and df -h sais my partitions are at least 40% empty.

I cannot change autologin without rebooting, where the fun part is that my shares and webserver work normally without Gnome and they're in use at the moment. I can reboot and try later, but it's a pretty bad workaround to not use a feature that I actually want to use.

How else can I remote wake up my computer and remote log in my shared desktop?

[Redsandro]

Please, someone knowledgable, tell us how to fix!

My Ubuntu machine is annoying right now having everything to do from recovery mode. When I boot, everything fails as if my home folder is mounted read-only. But it is not! If I switch to CLI, I can write files and dirs.



Ohyeah the recovery boot menu is also flawed. Keyboard doesn't respond and gives errors like this, always the same but color may vary :



At least it makes it look like there is indeed a problem with mounting the file systems. But when I swap to the next tty, everything works, is writable, and I can start X just fine.

What can I tell you to help me fix this?
Only other thing I can think of: My home folder is encrypted. And all errors seem to have to do with writing* problems in my home dir. But then again like I said, I can acces/read/write my homedir just fine from CLI.

*) ICEauthority, /home/user/Desktop, /home/user/.nautilus. and all...

[Redsandro]

Another discovery, also handy for ticthak@AOL.com:

You don't have to startx from the recovery console to log in normally.

When your startup fails with the ICE errors, you can switch to a different TTY, login, and restart X from there:

$ sudo service gdm stop
$ sudo service gdm start

happyhamster told me!

This brings you back to the login screen. You can log in normally now!

I am beginning to suspect this is a problem with autologin in combination with home folder encryption and some order of things done invented for 9.10 (Karmik).

[Redsandro]

Look like drs305 was right after all. Disabling my autologin caused my problems to go away. So I was right too. This is stupid. I cannot autologin. Once again 9.10 proves to be a diarriarelease.

[Flos Headford]

This worked for me:
Use a Ubuntu Live CD to boot up, and choose a command-line (shell) option.
With this, set your $HOME directory (/home/username) permissions to something appropriate (I used 755) and make sure all directories can be listed with the "ls" command. Then remove nautilus with

sudo apt-get remove nautilus

and delete the .ICEauthority entry in $HOME, and possibly in /var/lib/gdm. Then reboot with

sudo shutdown -r now

When you choose the same option on boot-up, from the command line you can use

sudo apt-get install nautilus
sudo shutdown -r now

and retrieve the CD a bit smartish. I do hope you get a clean straight boot and login, as I did!
With thanks to all who helped me,
Phil

[Redsandro]

Thanks for sharing. Now you have autologin with an encrypted homedir? I thought that was not possible.