My mistake (and your kindness) resulted in all of you spending HOURS and HOURS, trying to help me.

But you were all great! NO ONE ever told me, "Hey, you idiot, none of this would have happened if you had allowed enough work space on your hard drive for the software to work correctly!"

So, THANKS AGAIN, EVERYBODY, FOR YOUR EXPERTISE AND INCREDIBLE PATIENCE WITH ME -- and I'm very, very sorry for causing so much trouble.

ComputerBob wrote:

Back in the mid-90s, when I was just starting out with Linux, I used to experiment a lot and mess it all up.

Not knowing any other options at the time, I did A LOT of complete re-installng and re-configuring.

Over time, I messed up fewer and fewer things, so I didn't need to re-install very often.

I miss them days, I REALLY do
sometimes, and this is no exaggeration, I would go 96 hours without sleep just to learn stuff. I was so excited about it

Ironically, at first I knew little about Linux, then I knew a little more, until I think I knew a lot more. My record was 137 hours, back before I knew anything about CSS, and I manually updated my 700+ (at the time) web pages and uploaded them to the web via my 24K dial-up connection (out in the country, with squirrels constantly dining on the overhead telephone wires).

Then, my 2 strokes hit, and I had to re-teach myself how to turn my head, open my left hand, walk, subtract one number from another,  drink liquids without choking, etc.

Nowadays, I'm a fraction of the man that I was before my strokes. On the other hand, I'm doing much, much better than I was right after the strokes. I don't remember as much about Linux, or have the Linux or overall confidence that I had at one time.

Struggling with basic movement and thought has become a higher priority. But Linux still offers me a welcome mental challenge, when I'm up to thinking about it.

It's funny how things like that constantly remind  me that life is temporary, and love is a choice.

I miss them days, I REALLY do

OK, but I'm quite sure that you know way more now. Enjoy, too

Back in the mid-90s, when I was just starting out with Linux, I used to experiment a lot and mess it all up.

Not knowing any other options at the time, I did A LOT of complete re-installng and re-configuring.

Over time, I messed up fewer and fewer things, so I didn't need to re-install very often.

I miss them days, I REALLY do
sometimes, and this is no exaggeration, I would go 96 hours without sleep just to learn stuff. I was so excited about it

Once I was confident that that freshly-installed Beowulf was working great, on the separate partition, I waited  a few days, until  I got enough confidence to "risk" trashing my "perfect" existing ASCII install by doing an upgrade-in-place of it to Beowulf, still on sda1. I was very, very pleased with how quickly that upgrade process went, and how correct its results were.

I think that, earlier in this thread, I said that I had installed Beowulf on sda1 from scratch, but tonight, I remembered that, even though I had done that on a separate partition, the Beowulf that I've been using on sda1 USED TO BE ASCII, and was upgraded to Beowulf, preserving its autologin capability.

I don't know if any of that makes any difference to you, but, in case it does, I thought I'd better make it clear, now that I remember how it all happened.

Yeah, every different login manager has its own config file where you can set stuff like that. You did it the right way. I'm not sure why it wasn't working right. One of the live-config scripts sets up autologin when you boot the live media, but it should not have done anything if you had autologin already set.

THEN, I took a chance and looked in my own saved installation notes from back then. And I found the instructions that I had saved, to make it easier to do autologins in the future:

LightDM configuration file is found at /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf. Making a backup of the original configuration file is recommended.

Enable autologin

Look up this line in lightdm configuration file, UNCOMMENT IT and add your username.

CHANGE:
#autologin-user=

TO:
autologin-user=computerbob

NOTE: #autologin-user APPEARS IN TWO DIFFERENT PLACES IN THE LIGHTDM.CONF FILE.
THE ONLY ONE THAT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED IS THE ONE IN WHICH THE EQUALS SIGN APPEARS IMMEDIATELY AFTER #autologin-user=

THE OTHER PLACE THAT IT APPEARS, THE EQUALS SIGN APPEARS AFTER A SPACE, LIKE THIS #autologin-user =
DON'T EDIT THAT LINE - ONLY EDIT THE LINE IN WHICH THE EQUALS SIGN APPEARS IMMEDIATELY AFTER #autologin-user

I'm so glad that my HD has a lot better (and longer) memory than I do! 

I still want to know what you did to set up autologin so that I fully understand the cause of the problem, in case someone else does the same.

I'm sorry I didn't remember to figure that out yet. I'm using Xfce, with whatever the default login manager is, but I first set it up years ago, in ASCII, and it was automatically upgraded to work when I finally got up the motivation and courage to upgrade ASCII to Beowulf a few weeks ago.

I promise that I will figure out what I did, and where I did it, to make autologin work.   

Glad you got it working Computer Bob.

Thank you guys!!!! Seriously, YOU GUYS got it working. I just followed instructions.   

When you're in a mood to read some documentation, take a look here:
https://refracta.org/documents.html

I don't know if it's a real word or not, but you have all been patient, knowlegable, understanding, genii (the plural of "genius," in my mind) throughout this entire, lengthy, time-consuming thread.

It has been a REAL HONOR to work with you. Thank you very, very much. You have no idea how much good it did me to help in my own small way.  And I hope that none of you ever have a stroke, and learn, first-hand, how much you've all done for me.

But, please know, in your hearts, from my words, that you've done a tremendous thing for me.

I think there's supposed to be a way to use my WORKING USB stick to INSTALL my system onto a hard drive, but I'm not even going to worry about that right now.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

If you have any unanswered questions, or things for me to test, I'll be happy to keep replying!