Ubuntu 20.04 auto-login stopped working after backing up VM

[cfcman]

I have a Lubuntu 20.04 VM running on my Proxmox 8.2.5 server. It was configured to auto-login at boot, as it is running on a headless server. Today I stopped the VM to do a snapshot backup from the PVE console (to a local SATA SSD). When I restarted the VM it did not auto-login - it prompted me for a user id and password. My user name and password were rejected, however - when I enter them I get bounced back to the login box. I am only able to login as root.

If I do "cat /etc/passwd" I can see my user in the list.

Any idea why this has happened, and how I can restore my login access and auto-login?

 

[cfcman]

I figured it out - I was low on disk space (6GB remaining). Freeing up a little space resolved the problem