Unable to start guest session if a user named guest exists

[Jarno Suni]

OS: Ubuntu 8.10

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

That's actually deliberate. But if you have a real "guest" user, then that one should appear in the user switcher. Doesn't it?

[Jarno Suni (jarnos)]

Yes there are both guest and Guest session entries in the menu, but the latter one does not work.

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

If you have your own custom guest user, then you could just purge the package for "Guest session":
sudo aptitude purge gdm-guest-session

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

This occurs if the guest session is not cleaned up properly (e.g. if the system loses power).

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

To reproduce the no-cleanup case:
1. Log in
2. Start guest session
3. Run sudo service gdm restart

There will be a guest account in /etc/passwd and a guest home directory in /tmp
If step 3 is replaced by a power failure there will be a guest account and no home directory

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

The current /usr/share/gdm/guest-session/guest-session-setup.sh does get along with an existing guest user, it just checks if it is a system user and that it doesn't have a pre-existing home dir outside of /tmp/. I cannot replicate this.

In such a situation, can you please give me the output of

  sudo sh -ex /usr/share/gdm/guest-session/guest-session-setup.sh

?

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

I've tried the cases of having an restarting gdm leaving the account and home dir, and restarting the machine and leaving just the account. It no longer seems to be an issue.

[mp459 (mickey-srtdata)]

FWIW, "removing" the guest account from the GUI did nto work for me. Had to

sudo userdel guest
sudo rm -fr /home/guest

Now it "guest session" works.

thanks for the tips
Y

[WalterCool (waltercool)]

Ubuntu should check if a user called "guest" exists... if exists... try with guest1... guest2... guest3... etc