Hello,
So I have made a mistake and have overwritten some files with pacnew files. Now I cannot log into the user session. I did some research and encountered other problems with similar origins. They were told to log in per chroot via liveUSB.
Before I try that I wanted to try a simpler solution. How can I log into root? As root user I should be able to change the user name and password, shouldn’t I?
I tried logging into root via tty but there I also need my user logins, which are not working.
So it boils down to:
How can I log in into root despite not being able to log in into user?
Once being root, how can I fix my login problem for user account?
If you have overwritten /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow you have effectively locked yourself out.
If you did what I suspect you did - the only method is by means of a live ISO and chroot.
Before you venture into setting passwd for users you should check if the backup files are still there - which you can then copy over - the backups are name
No - you need to restore using the backup files - in a chroot environment.
If you know how to manually locate and mount the root partition, a chrooted environment is not strictly required - but you need booting a live environment - again strictly speaking - Manjaro is not required - any live GNU/Linux will do.