On 06/10/2015 05:25 PM, Kay Schenk wrote: > I get /home/<username> not found when it's there and setup with correct > permissions -- well here I am using it in run level 5 just fine! Log in as root, and watch /var/log/messages, /var/log/secure, and /var/log/audit/audit.log while a "normal" user logs in. # tail -n0 -f /var/log/messages /var/log/secure /var/log/audit/audit.log > So, my normal user is left logged in at /root. /root or / ? The two are different, and non-root users should not have access to /root > My next step is to take a look at the gnome startup script vs startx to > see if I can figure out the differences if no one has encountered this > before. startx runs the X server, which will in turn run an X session. Gnome doesn't have a "startup script" per se, but if it did, it would be an X session, something that runs after / under startx. There's nothing there to compare. However, you could capture startx output and execution for debugging: $ sh -x /usr/bin/startx > startx.trace 2>&1 The file "startx.trace" will have a list of all of the commands run, and all of their output (including errors). /var/log/X* might be interesting as well.