Unable to log into i3 after modifying keyboard layouts

Hello, I tried to setup a different keyboard layout when i connect one of my keyboards that has a US layout (normally I use DE) and seem to have broken something in the process.
I mainly used variations of the commands setxkbmap, localectl set-x11-keymap and loadkeys. Also I tried to add a file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d similar to the default 00-keyboard.conf but have removed it again during my attempts to fix the error.

The error i observe is that the automatic login with lightdm which I normally use failed after a reboot and it presents the password prompt. When I enter my password the screen goes black briefly and then the password prompt is shown again. This behavior persists now over reboots. I use i3 with lightdm.

I managed to narrow down the error to a message in the lightdm greeter log which says

[+2,19s] CRITICAL: xapp_kbd_layout_controller_get_current_short_group_label: assertion ‘controller->priv->enabled’ failed
[+2,19s] CRITICAL: xapp_kbd_layout_controller_get_current_name: assertion ‘controller->priv->enabled’ failed
[+2,20s] CRITICAL: xapp_kbd_layout_controller_get_current_short_group_label: assertion ‘controller->priv->enabled’ failed

I can open a non graphical TTY session and everything works OK there regarding the keyboard.
The only thing I could find regarding the failed assertion is the reference to the “enabled” entry in the XAppKbdLayoutController documentation (sorry, I cannot link to it because of my new account) but that did not really help me. The documentation just says “Whether we’re enabled (more than one keyboard layout is installed).”. So it seems like this controller should be enabled but is not?

If there are additional logs or information that would help to narrow down the issue I will provide them of course. I would be very grateful for any hints.

In the meantime i have been able to figure out that the assertion that i see in the log is probably not the cause for not being able to log in since it also happens on a different install where I can log in without problems.

So the question is why logging into i3 is not possible via lightdm, which probably simplifies troubleshooting.

As expected this simplified troubleshooting a lot.
Turns out my .Xauthority file was owned by root because I apparently ran “sudo startx”.
A simple chown username:username .Xauthority and reboot fixed the problem.

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