Ubuntu 26.04.1 Autologin not working

Support and Help
1

Ubuntu Version

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

Desktop Environment (if applicable)

GNOME

Problem Description

Autologin not working

Relevant System Information

GPU : Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060

2

If you navigate to /etc/gdm3/custom.conf, do you see

[daemon]
AutomaticLoginEnable=True
AutomaticLogin=your_user_name
3

yes i have these 2 lines in my custom.conf despite that autologin don’t work

4

Was autologin working previously i.e. when you had 26.04?
My system is now 26.04.1 and autologin is OK.

Let’s try and surprise it into working correctly :thinking:
Using the terminal

sudo nano /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

Change True to False
Save and close
Power off completely (not restart)

Power on
Login with user name and password
Edit the file again False to True
Save, close and power off again

Any luck?

5

Previously i had ubuntu 24.04.4 and it worked fine. After upgrading to 26.04.1 Autologin stop working.

6

You didn’t answer @tea-for-one’s question by following the steps given. Please follow what @tea-for-one is asking to help troubleshoot.

1 Like
7

i follow the steps given and it doesn’t work

8

Did you upgrade in-situ 24.04.4 > 26.04.1?
Or download the Ubuntu 26.04 iso and perform a clean installation?

9

i upgrade from 24.04.4 to 26.04.1

10

I did a bit of investigation and found a plausible reason for this problem.
Ubuntu 26.04 is now using Wayland rather than X11 and together with your Nvidia GPU, there could possibly be a race condition?

However, because the proprietary NVIDIA kernel modules take a split second longer to load than Intel or AMD drivers, GDM encounters a race condition. It hits an error, crashes behind the scenes, and drops you back onto the regular user selection screen

I can’t test the suggestion myself because I do not have an Nvidia card.
Anyway, worth a shot:-

Allow Grub to appear
Press e to temporarily edit the boot stanza
Use the arrow keys to find the line that starts with linux containing quiet splash (similar to below)

linux /boot/vmlinuz-7.0.0-30-generic root=UUID=6e8709a6-345c-41a2-bb9d-f34257c0eb35 ro quiet splash.......

Edit the line to include nvidia-drm.modeset=1 after quiet splash
Leave everything else intact

linux /boot/vmlinuz-7.0.0-30-generic root=UUID=6e8709a6-345c-41a2-bb9d-f34257c0eb35 ro quiet splash nvidia-drm.modeset=1...........

Press Ctrl x or F10 to continue booting

If successful, it can be made permanent.
If unsuccessful, there may be other grub parameters to try?

11

With this custom.conf

WaylandEnable=true

AutomaticLoginEnable=true

AutomaticLogin=filip

DefaultSession=gnome-wayland.desktop

and nvidia-drm.modeset=1 parameter in /etc/default/grub

autologin isn’t stable on Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS ; it works about once out of every four times.

12

25% improvement - perhaps on the right track?

If I find more relevant info, I’ll revisit the topic.

In the meantime, you may wish to consider filing a bug report against gdm3