"Your session only lasted less than 10 seconds" after upgrade to 9.04

Boot to root recovery console (ESC at grub, choose recovery mode, then select root console)

once here you will get a prompt and some power

then you will need to chnage where I put <user> you put the username having issues

cd /home
chown -R <user> ./<user>
chmod -^ 750 ./<user>

so a working example:

cd /home
chown -R foo ./foo
chmod - 750 ./foo

This will give you full access to your won files as welll as full RWX access. I imagine you have been using

sudo gedit recently?

HTH

If believe there is a typo in the chmod commands, those should be: “chmod 750 ./<user>” and “chmod 750 ./foo”, respectively (and without the quotation marks of course).

You need the -R option so the action acts RECURSIVELY through the file structure, otherwise it will only act on the folder you name and ignore all contents.

You are absolutely right; still, that R was missing, hence it should be: “chmod -R 750 ./<user>” and “chmod -R 750 ./foo”, respectively, without quotation marks.

I had the same problem this morning. Last night, my laptop froze after I tried to wake it up again after a suspend. The screen remained black, after a while there was no disk activity so I forced a shutdown. Today, I got the same error, that my session had lasted less than 10 seconds, which could mean that there was insufficient disk space or that an installation had failed. (Neither is the case, 28% of my Ubuntu partition is still available).

In my case, I could start up by choosing a different session type. By starting up in Gnome rather than xclient, everything works normally. But if I restart an xclient session, the same error will appear. Something still needs to be fixed, but what?

I already did this check.
I am pretty sure I have no root-owned files in my home dir (also in hidden directories, which would not be affected by the commands You are suggesting; I did a "ls -lRA ~/" to be real sure).
No avail.

I also tried creating a brand new user. I can login with it just once (after reboot), second time I get the error.
My guess is some daemon which should die after logout doesn't or some daemon that should stay alive does not, but I do not know enough about the real structure of gnome to say what is missing.

Any other suggestion?

TiA

Found:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bonobo/+bug/293970

Just expressing no ideas.
Did you remove .ICEauthority as suggested in your link, logout- and in again?

Did you logout- and in after this?
e.g. #sudo chmod -R 750 /home/foo && sudo chown -R foo /home/foo

Enough space left?
cat /etc/fstab
mount
df -h

Hi,
I do not know if bug 293970 is relevant, but I do confirm that in the error condition I cannot launch gnome terminal, while konsole does work.

I did try removing .ICEauthority.

I tried login/logout and reboot.

mauro@wiki3A:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda5
UUID=ee4ca499-8251-49cf-8fd3-1c33ca2ecbc4 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda7
UUID=eea5c29d-3223-4446-88cc-16021f89e17e /exports ext3 relatime 0 2
# /dev/sda6
UUID=b9ce6e35-3f7d-4853-be67-b6067e62b63c none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/sda2 /mnt/C ntfs-3g user,noauto,uid=softin,gid=softin 0 0
mauro@wiki3A:~$ mount
/dev/sda5 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
lrm on /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=755)
/dev/sda7 on /exports type ext3 (rw,relatime)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
rpc_pipefs on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
nfsd on /proc/fs/nfsd type nfsd (rw)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/mauro/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=mauro)
mauro@wiki3A:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 42G 20G 20G 52% /
tmpfs 1.5G 0 1.5G 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 1.5G 344K 1.5G 1% /var/run
varlock 1.5G 4.0K 1.5G 1% /var/lock
udev 1.5G 200K 1.5G 1% /dev
tmpfs 1.5G 1.2M 1.5G 1% /dev/shm
lrm 1.5G 2.4M 1.5G 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/volatile
/dev/sda7 93G 86G 2.0G 98% /exports
mauro@wiki3A:~$

Any other idea?
At least: I think I should file this as a Jaunty bug; which tag(s) do You suggest?

TiA

Hi,
it's all about trial&error.
Do you autosave gnome-sessions? If there is a related folder in /home/user remove the content.
In the other thread you said,
>I moved out of the way all gnome related configuration dirs in my home...
but you didn't mention .gnome2, what about if you move (rename) it?
And what about the other suggestion: ##either from recovery mode (root shell) or ctrl+alt+f2
sudo -s
password:
apt-get purge remove gnome-session
apt-get autoremove && sudo apt-get clean && sudo apt-get autoclean
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install gnome-session
apt-get install -f

##in case of errors:
dpkg-reconfigure gnome-session
dpkg --configure -a

##another option:
sudo -s
killall gdm
apt-get install -f
dpkg-reconfigure gdm

Last, you may check if there are weird entries in /etc/environment:
env
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnvironmentVariables

Bug procedure: ##against gnome-session. They will change it anyway when concluding it isn't.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures

Or reopen:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-session/+bug/93291

ZioNemo - I feel I have the same error. Did you get this fixed? How?

Sam,

I did everything outlined in your entry above, but nothing has changed. I still have the problem.

Have you any other ideas? I'm completely disillusioned.

In my worst days with Windows I've never lost my system for a week.

I have no idea what to do.

Éamon

Sorry Eamon,
running out of ideas here, please feel free to file a bug as described above.

I had the same problem. It helped to disable "Automatically save changes to session" under "Startup programs preferences" -> "Options". HTH