User can't login on tty1 but can on other tty's

Question

Last weekend I installed Kali Linux (4.13.0-kali1-amd64). Now after installation and creating a new user (because I don't want to use root) I can login on tty2 to tty6 (via ALT+CTRL+F*), but I can't login on the graphical interface. I can login with the root account though. There aren't any error messages. It just seems like it's logging in, the screen goes black and then back to the login screen (username). Is this a common thing and how do I solve this?

Answer 1

• No, this isn't a "common thing".
• I'm sure there's an error message; you're just looking in the wrong place. Check:
  • /var/log/syslog or /var/log/messages
  • dmesg
  • /var/log/Xorg.0.log
  • This is likely due to some component of the graphical stack or the desktop requiring root privileges (maybe by design on Kali Linux since it seems to default to running as root; maybe due to a file whose permissions are wrong / owned by the wrong user because it was created by root). Could be a driver, could be DBus, hard to say what exactly without reading your logs. You should read the logs and interpret the error messages yourself to figure out what's wrong... that's what the logs are there for.

Kali Linux is designed for very advanced, extremely technical users who know what they're doing (yes, including with the inner details of the open source graphics stack) and can diagnose and fix problems on their own. If you're needing this sort of advice, you're probably not the target audience for the distribution. Honestly you'd be better served installing Ubuntu, then trying to get security tools running on top of that, since Ubuntu will almost assuredly at least work when you login.

Kali Linux is also an extremely terrible distribution for general desktop / GUI usage, since its focus is security testing, not usability or user-friendliness. Almost any other up-to-date distribution out there will be more reliable and easier to get running as a regular user desktop.