Fresh Tumbleweed Install w/Encryption fails to login on first boot

Downloaded an ISO last night 10/16/24 and installed it today. I did it 3 times with the same results. Did guided disk setup, on NVME disk, encrypted root and swap. On first boot after install, entered decrypt passphrase, then password for the desktop but it doesn’t accept my linux password and after the 3rd attempt, hangs for a bit then drops into the emergency shell. Looking at the journalctl -xe log, I see numerous message from dracut-initqueue with timeouts on crypt.sh, then entering emergency shell. I did a 4th install without encryption and that went smooth. Any thoughts on how to get the install to work with encryption. Or is there something I am doing wrong and screwing myself?

Note: /etc/crypttab shows 2 entries cr_root and cr_swap, /etc/fstab was not found.

Red

What you describe does not sound right.

If you are going to emergency shell, then booting did not complete. And in that case there should not be a login screen. Yet you say you gave password for desktop.

My best guess is that there is a problem with your encryption passphrase.

Maybe try again. But be careful to use a passphrase that does not depend on any special characters or international translations. Best to stick to plain ASCII characters that are unambiguous and the same in all languages.

I can do it again.
The passphrase has all lowercase characters, 2 numbers and a single comma.
I will remove the comma if that might help.

It gets all the way to the gui and has a password prompt, but after 3 attempts(password has no special characters), it gives a little spinner while it is working and drops out of that gui password prompt to the emergency shell and ask for control-d to continue or enter the root password for maintenance.

I will report back shortly.

Red

Hmm, something else is wrong. I’ve never seen that.

If it gets that far, the encryption should not be the problem. Perhaps you are having a disk failure or a memory error. But that’s only a guess.

Re-Installation complete.

Same results.
A prompt for the decryption passphrase, then a prompt for a password that I assume is for OpenSUSE, but it is dark and blank screen except for the password box. After 3 attempts with my OpenSUSE password, it spends time doing something with a spinning icon, then drops to emergency shell.

The passphrase has all lowercase and 2 numbers.
The OpenSUSE password is all lowercase no numbers.

Still shows the same timeout from dracut-initqueue on crypt.sh.
Same 2 entries in /etc/crypttab.
Still no file found for /etc/fstab.

NOTE: I chose the NVME drive in guided disk section.
I chose encrypt the disk, but I left encrypt LVM unchecked since it was not mandatory.

Let me know how you think I should proceed.
Thanks in advanced for your assistance.

Red

I don’t have any good ideas.

It seems that there is an incompatibility between your hardware and Tumbleweed.

Try:

Boot the system to a terminal mode (multi-user mode).

At the grub prompt, hit the ‘e’ key. That should give you and exit box where you can change the boot command.

Scroll down to a line that begins “linux” (it might be “linuxefi”).
Move to the end of that boot line. Append " 3" to the line (without the quotes). Then use CTRL-X to continue booting.

That should boot to a command line screen with the login command showing. See whether you can login there.

Note that you should be able to logout again and then use CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot. And you can safely power off at the grub prompt.

Because you were requested not “password for the desktop” (whatever it means), but the password to decrypt your LUKS partitions.

Providing your own interpretation without facts just leads to lengthy fruitless discussions as already started. Post screenshot or photo of the screen where you are requested “password for the desktop”.

Hi Redburn and welcome to the forum.

I remember that LUKS encryption may in some cases ask for the LUKS password 2 times at boot.

What happens if you enter the LUKS password at both the password prompts?

The OpenSuse password will be a graphical login - not just text.

Try also checking LVM, if you re-install.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
I will take the high road and try the LUKS passphrase for all on my next attempt and if I do a re-install, I will encrypt LVM as well.

But in lieu of photos, here is a video I did from the end of the install to the first boot so you can see what prompts show up.

Pardon the phone size video and just skip to any place you wish to see.

Red

OK, it is confirmed, the prompt after the passphrase for LUKS is still a LUKS prompt as that passphrase worked and it then gave me the OpenSUSE login prompt.

Thanks all for your assistance.

Not that it is important but just curious as to why LUKS needed the passphrase a second time?

Red

The first prompt is probably from grub so that it can access the kernel to boot your system. It does pass that along to the kernel (in most cases) so that it can be used to decrypt your root file system. But you also have encrypted swap, and that also needs a passphrase.

You can configure your system so that the passphrase for swap is read from a file. But you can’t set that up during a normal install, so it has to be setup later.

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