At gdm login, I cannot login as normal user. When I select my username, and type the password, I immediately see the console for less than a second and then again the GDM login screen. It is as if gdm is restarting when I login. But I can login as root.
Detailed description:
I made a fresh BTRFS partition, and created a subvolume “opensuse”. I made it the default subvolume.
Launched live media and proceeded to install with separate /boot and **/home **(both ext4). Chose not to format any partitions. Chose not to install bootloader. Installation went fine.
After some tweaking the existing grub installation’s config, I was sucessfully able to launch opensuse. FIrst run proceeded as usual. Finally greeted me with gdm login.
Now I experienced what I mentioned in “Problem” section.
I believe its some permission issue. Or is it some snapshots issue?
It is restarting probably because the session crashed, possibly due to corrupted DE session file(s) that persist from the previous user’s session. For example, when this happened here (on a KDM/KDE system), a newly created test user worked ok and you should also try that as a check.
Recovering the corrupted user session may just be a case of removing the DE’s [hidden] user settings file(s). That can work for KDE, but I don’t know the those files wrt Gnome. That doesn’t always work, as was the case on my KDE based 12.2 system. I eventually cleared the problem by removing a session file that may have been on one of those temporary “tmpfs” partitions that openSUSE places on the HDD. Unfortunately I don’t recall the specific filename.
Launched live media and proceeded to install with separate /boot and **/home **(both ext4). Chose not to format any partitions. Chose not to install bootloader. Installation went fine.
After some tweaking the existing grub installation’s config, I was sucessfully able to launch opensuse. FIrst run proceeded as usual. Finally greeted me with gdm login.
Hmm, so you were relying on the old user settings in /home/, leftover in old session files…
One of those “tmpfs” partitions is mounted as /var/run, so you may want to also take a look there, e.g. /var/run/user. Since they are only temporary file systems, you should be able to remove safely with a partitioner (I did), should you need to.
After some fails tinkering with the config files you mentioned, I finally decided to reinstall, this time without a separate /home partition, but with separate /boot.
This time it worked well
Unlucky, normally you should be ok with a separate /home. Glad it’s ok after the reinstall.
Assuming you have btrfs installed on root partition and Snapper is operating by default, your integrated /home will now be included in snapshots. To avoid that, you can define /home as a sub-volume and it will be excluded from snapshotting. You can use YaST partitioner for that.
AFAIK Grub can not boot to a BTRFS partition. You can have a separate home partition. I think that it is good to have a separate home which gives you much more flexibility on upgrades and and new installs while keeping your personal data.
The OP had a separate home partition, and after having problems decided on an integrated /home.
I prefer to use a separate data partition mounted into the integrated /home, thus separating personal data from DE settings. Also, it’s a better configuration for multi-booting linux-based systems with shared data. Otherwise you get conflicts with different systems’ settings if you try to use a shared home partition.
