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I followed the instructions in How to set a PIN password or a short password in Ubuntu Linux to make my life easier, but apparently it didn't made my life any easier:

Now I can't login to my Ubuntu 18.10 desktop environment even with my own PIN password that I set up.

what should I do now?

Fabby
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    And what is the question? – yms Dec 29 '18 at 02:05
  • I can't login even with my own password, "pin that I set up using that instructions." –  Dec 29 '18 at 02:07
  • But the image you posted has nothing to do with the problem you are describing... it is just a wizard to select your display manager (X11 vs Wayland). https://askubuntu.com/questions/11537/why-is-wayland-better – yms Dec 29 '18 at 02:08
  • Whole point I can't login, I know it's sounds annoying but is there any default password or something like that!? –  Dec 29 '18 at 02:11
  • I found it.I followed this instructions: http://blog.radevic.com/2017/11/how-to-set-pin-password-or-short.html what am I missing here?! –  Dec 29 '18 at 02:13
  • Those instructions look old, many things have changed since version 16.04. You can try CTRL+ALT+F1 to login with your regular password into a console then uninstall the package that you are using for the pin-thing (sudo apt remove libpam-pwdfile) – yms Dec 29 '18 at 02:19
  • You can check your password by logging in via a text terminal. If however you don't have enough space in $HOME (your user directory), a gui login will fail and you will be logged out & be asked to login again (gui requires temporary work files to be created & used, and can't proceed if space is limited; text login does not require this). By logging in via text terminal, you can confirm your password, then check you have space (df -hl or disk-free -human.output+local only) – guiverc Dec 29 '18 at 02:32
  • When and how many times I should press CTRL+ALT+F1 ? –  Dec 29 '18 at 02:49
  • As soon as you get some UI graphics (other than the initial "loading" screen) showing up, you should be able to do CTRL+ALT+F1. Doing it once should be enough. Good luck. – yms Dec 29 '18 at 03:06
  • Ok, I have uninstalled/purged both "libpam-pwdfile" and "lightdm". Now how to switch back to GUI version. After reboot, I get terminal mode only. –  Dec 29 '18 at 03:52
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    Matter is solved now. Thanks u yms and guivrec. I also used stackflow to reinstall default display manager. Thanks again. –  Dec 29 '18 at 04:47
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    Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! If you solved your own problem, please consider to answer your own question one it it reopened and accept your answer. Don’t put the answer in your question or the comments! :-) – David Foerster Jan 02 '19 at 14:43

1 Answers1

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The instructions in the tutorial that you followed are out-of-date because the default login display manager in Ubuntu 18.10 is gdm3, not lightdm. Uninstall the packages that you installed by following the instructions from How to set a PIN password or a short password in Ubuntu Linux, and reinstall the default login display manager (gdm3).

Access a virtual console by pressing the keyboard combination Ctrl+Alt+F3 from the screen where the system is stopped when trying to boot the computer.

To login from a virtual console:

  1. At the login: prompt type your username and press Enter.

  2. At the Password: prompt type your user password and press Enter. After you have logged in, you can run commands from the virtual console.

Run the following commands. 

sudo apt purge libpam-pwdfile lightdm    
sudo apt install gdm3   
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3    
sudo reboot

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3 will open up a new window allowing you to select gdm3 as the default login display manager. Use the arrow keys to select gdm3 and press the Tab key to put the focus on <OK> and press Enter. Then reboot by running this command: sudo reboot

karel
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