mjhjmtu

I have started running Jessie (Debian 8) with a LightDM/Xfce desktop on my HTPC after it grinding to a near-halt on W7. One of the things that I cannot get past is having to type the password -- not a normal thing to do for watching TV.

Following the instructions on the Debian Wiki I got as far as my login being automatically selected. But this still requires the password, and half-fixes like empty / trivial passwords are not allowed.

Is it possible to go straight to the Xfce session without login/password?

This page describes how to enable it.

Edit the LightDM configuration file and ensure these lines are uncommented and correctly configured:

/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

[Seat:*]
pam-service=lightdm
pam-autologin-service=lightdm-autologin
autologin-user=username
autologin-user-timeout=0
session-wrapper=/etc/X11/Xsession
greeter-session=lightdm-greeter

LightDM goes through PAM even when autologin is enabled. You must be part of the autologin group to be able to login automatically without entering your password:

# groupadd -r autologin
# gpasswd -a username autologin

here is the correct answer for Debian 9 Jessie, for all of you who need help the correct way.

Add Auto Login to Debian

First you need switch to the LightDM (Desktop Manager).

1. 
   

   Switch to LightDM**

   
   
   

   sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm
   

   
   


2. 
   

   Add the Autologin account**

   
   
   

   sudo groupadd -r autologin
   
   sudo gpasswd -a YOURUSERNAME autologin
   

   
   


3. 
   

   Edit the LightDM Config Files

   
   
   

   sudo leafpad /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
   

   
   

Add all 3 of these lines below to the file and save it:

[SeatDefaults]
autologin-user=YOURUSERNAME
autologin-user-timeout=0
autologin-session=xfce

Now, notice that above has XFCE as the session. If you use gnome, cinnamon, etc., make sure you specify what session (GUI) you use, otherwise above will log you into XFCE and you may not have it installed.

If you don't know, type

echo $DESKTOP_SESSION

I solved it using the Debian wiki page and this page on LinuxServe -- especially the comment!

when I do /usr/sbin/lightdm --show-config I get two files: /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/01_debian.conf

These I edited so that in /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/01_debian.conf it says:
greeter-session=lightdm-greeter
session-wrapper=/etc/X11/Xsession

and in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf it says:
autologin-user=username
autologin-user-timeout=0

The trick was that, as the comment at the end of the second link says, that the autologin settings need to be in the [SeatDefaults] section of the file. There are two places where the lines appear, commented, and I had uncommented the first place.

It was a bit strange because in normal settings files for Debian, lines like these don't appear twice -- but I should have taken a better look!

Below worked for me. I was logged as root.

1. Add user to autologin goup

groupadd -r autologin
gpasswd -a YOURUSERNAME autologin

2. Edit config file ->
   /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
   Change part below [Seat:*] ->
   uncomment and fill data

autologin-user=YOURUSERNAME
autologin-user-timeout=0
autologin-session=DESKTOP_SESSION

2a. If you don't know session name
echo $DESKTOP_SESSION

In Debian 9 with Xfce, all I had to do was add this to /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf:

[Seat:*]
autologin-user=david

Despite what the other answers say, my user does not need to be in the autologin group and I didn't need to do anything with PAM.