Got it! Many thanks. If you have no objection, I will post this in two places on ubuntuforums.org to help others in the same predicament.
Hope the Ubuntu folks come up with a permanent patch. -- gdm 2.14.7-0ubuntu1 upgrade forces password on autologin https://launchpad.net/bugs/49940 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
