Ubuntu

Removing Mysterious Extraneous Guest Account from Ubuntu 12.04

Asked by Julianloui

A mysterious extraneous guest account has just popped up in my Ubuntu 12.04 system and I also see a persistent red line in the upper right-hand pull-down menu reading"Restart to Complete Updates". This might have something to do with my updating the system software tonight. But Ubuntu didn't show any errors after the updates were completed. I've restarted the system several times to no avail. I would like to get rid of this annoying account since now I cannot get into my own account. System Settings shows only one user account, namely my (Administrative) account.

Any help from this forum will be much appreciated.
ers
Julianlouiers

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Solved by:
Thomas Krüger
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Best Thomas Krüger (thkrueger) said : 		#1

The guest account is a normal feature of Ubuntu. It allow someone to use the computer with very limited permissions. All data of the guest is deleted after logout.
If can be deactivated by editing the lightdm configureation:

gksudo gedit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

and adding the line:
allow-guest=false

For the other things:
Maybe something went wrong while updating. Try this:

Go to the text console by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1. Login with your username and password. Then type this command and hit enter:

sudo apt-get install

It will ask for your password again.
Is there any error or warning?

BTW: You can get back to graphical login with Alt+F7.

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Julianloui (julianloui) said : 		#2

Thomas,

Thank you very much for your prompt help. I was able to deactivate the guest account after I luckily managed to switch back to my account to execute your instructions.

 Looking back I now realize that since my restarts were initiated from the guest account, they had no system-wide meaning. I should have shut down the system before restarting to effectively complete the update installation. Now the red reminder is gone and everything is back to normal.

Thanks very much again.

Julianloui

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Julianloui (julianloui) said : 		#3

Thanks Thomas Krüger, that solved my question.