Can not login to personal user, but as root

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13

Well, not being a Gnome user, I can’t see anything. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to find, though. However, I did think of on last thing to try. and that is removing the ~/.config directory to see if it works.

So let’s backup the .config directory:

mv /home/<userName>/.config /home/<userName>/.config.backup

Where <userName> is equal to, you guessed it, your username.

If it works, start copying the configs files back one-by-one, to find the one causing the problems.

If that doesn’t work, well then I’m fresh out of ideas.

14

that issue is not limited to GNOME I believe. I myself am using xfce4. Would you still believe that this is not to be worked around by trying i.e. another DM?

my $USER/.config/ contains 56320 files, so it might be tricky to try them one by one. If still this is the way to go I guess I start ruling out that newest ones.

15

Apologies. I read the xfce tag, but it kind of slipped my mind seeing as xfce also uses GTK…

I honestly don’t know…But it can’t hurt to try. Or first you can try a new user.

In fact, do that and see if it works, if it does, it confirms it’s some kind of user-configuration.

Do that once you’ve confirmed it is a config file…

16

how would i just switch off the usage of ‘lightdm’ in order to see whether I can login to terminal and ‘startx’ (assuming this will kick me into the Desktop environment (xfce)) from there?

Just disabling the lightdm.service ?

17

I suspect so, yes. But I’m not :100: on it, though. Or stop it first:

systemctl stop lightdm.service

…to see what happens.

:man_shrugging:

19

so, going aroun lightdm was not it (the method for that you digged out in the other thread was spot-on btw).

I could not log in to anybody else then root in the tty session neither. it is getting more mysteroius by the minute somehow.

Luckily I am not for my live depending on this machine right now (besides sucking big time).

btw: thx a mil for all the support till here @Mirdarthos & anybody else

20

Have you got space on your home partition?

Have you checked faillock? Even if it’s not your problem, it may be activated due to failed logins and so complicate matters.

1 Like
21

good point, but

df -h /home
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1       443G  397G   44G  91% /home

I never heard of faillock, will look into this. thx

22

I think this may be the route to success, because I can do successfully the following (starting in the terminal of the root user)

manj-laptop ~]# su - manolo
05:58:22 me@manj-laptop ~ → export DISPLAY=':0.0'
05:58:59 me@manj-laptop ~ → echo $DISPLAY
:0.0
05:59:09 me@manj-laptop ~ → firefox &
[1] 9077
05:59:16 me@manj-laptop ~ → ATTENTION: default value of option mesa_glthread overridden by environment.
ATTENTION: default value of option mesa_glthread overridden by environment.

this starts firefox as the personal user. So I guess I need to find out how to set this value for DISPLAY constantly. I guess it is not adding export DISPLAY=':0.0' to /etc/profile which I will try as a temporary solution maybe anyway.

23

That seems rather full to me, but you should have enough space for it to not cause this.

I suspect DISPLAY is not set because you’re initially logged in as root. You’re not meant to log in as root in the GUI.

24

yes, maybe that gets generated during the login procedure

25

My point is that it’s a red herring. You’re trying to fix something that isn’t meant to work, instead of finding your real problem.

26

I’d put it as “trying to locate the real problem”.

As I have no clue what to look for I am probably guilty of snapping at all the herring I can come across during that process. And some of them may be red :slight_smile: . Do you have any other suggestions?

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27

I forgot that with btrfs you need to use btrfs to report the space, so you may still be running out.

btrfs filesystem usage /
btrfs filesystem usage /home

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Btrfs#Displaying_used/free_space

28

true, but the outcome is not significantly differrent

sudo btrfs fi usage /home | grep Free
Free (estimated):		  42.96GiB	(min: 42.96GiB)
Free (statfs, df):		  42.96GiB
29

Is the password rejected or do you start to log in and then get dumped out?

Have you checked the password is what you expect? If not, go to a TTY and type the password in the username field.

30

Did you install today’s Stable Update? If so, then you should have paid attention to this… :arrow_down:

You probably need to set a new password in order for yescrypt to be able to work on your old login, because your old login was still using sha512, and with the new encryption algorithm in place, logind can probably not recognize the sha512-encrypted password for your account in /etc/shadow.

31

My 2 cents – If your data is disposable; you could simply start over while this new information is fresh in your mind. There will probably be some blowback; some shock and horror, from the community at large for even hinting at this … but … often, it just saves time and complication. That is all. Cheers.

32

It can easily add or modify anything that will apply to existing and new users.

To back waaaay up, so you did install this? And everything in that quote is true? They say:

can do su [username]

This bypasses the login environment. Can you even login normally? Forget GDM/X/whatever. su needs the -i parameter to use the user’s login environment. Heck even just: ssh user@localhost

With the little I know, seems possible that installer messed up the login scripts for everyone.

Edit: Sorry, I was thinking sudo -i

33

Dropping to the Super User su - would be done usually from the logged in User. Considering he cannot seem to login as any normal User; seemingly only as root, then the point is moot.

Root already has the access and permissions needed to workaround the issue; or to delete/create profiles or partitions aswell, if desired.

Something that hasn’t yet been asked: was the Manjaro installer (CD/DVD/USB) a current version; and did the OP check the media for defects using the provided hashes, before install?

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