Laptop cpu suddenly went to 99%, now can boot but not login.

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi. This charming new problem occurred contemporaneously whilst i was working on an unrelated thread several hours ago today https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/528150-KDEConnect?p=2845376#post2845376 , from which i now quote my Postscript:

…in Lappy’s YaST FW settings, Lappy suddenly became severely laggy to all inputs, & cpu went to 99%. Whilst i could not get to see what was eating the cpu, i know that it was not the btrfs maintenance [balancing] cron job, as that runs on Tuesday nights & it’s my Sunday afternoon now]. Eventually with no improvement i had to Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill the session, but that did not help as once logged in again it was still overloaded. I tried to reboot but it was ignored. I REISUB’d, & thereafter discovered the extent of the apparent disaster. I can boot, “apparently” unlock my encrypted /home at the screen for that as usual, but then cannot actually login to my Plasma or IceWM desktop anymore, as me or my other user. I tried multiple Snapper Rollbacks, but all gave no change to the preceding symptoms. I rebooted from Live media then ran

sudo btrfs check --repair /dev/sda3

as previously worked for me in Tower [https://forums.opensuse.org/showthre...1#post2840121], but all the preceding symptoms [boot, “decrypt & mount”, login just bounces back to login screen] continued.

Given that notwithstanding the “apparent” success of unlocking my Lappy’s crypto_LUKS /home [in that no error msg appears, & all seems to proceed as normal from there to the subsequent desktop login screen], the observation that every login attempt invisibly fails [ie, no error msg] & instead the login screen simply keeps reappearing, rather than proceeding to my desktop, makes me wonder if somehow whatever suddenly drove the cpu to 99% & initiated this mess might have somehow damaged my encryption system, ie, maybe it’s not really decrypting & mounting any longer…?

Does anyone pls have any suggestions, or need i prepare myself for a full reinstallation?

2

At the login screen, hit Ctrl-Alt-F2, and first try to login with username and password. If that doesn’t work try to login as root, find out whether /home is mounted. It seems that the culprit is outside of the system’s snapshot. Any backups of /home ?

3

Thanks. Yes i can, kinda sorta, login at tty2, but… unpleasant message there:

You have mail.
– gooeygirl: /home/gooeygirl: change directory failed: No such file or directory
Logging in with home = “/”.

Am i correct to interpret this as implying that the system cannot find my* /home*, presumably because the decryption & mounting failed?

Still in tty2 i logged in as root, via “su -”. Transcribing here [am writing this in Tower, whilst looking at Lappy next to me], i changed to / directory, then ran “df -h”. Neither /dev/sda4 [encrypted Swap] nor /dev/sda5 [encrypted /home] is listed [ie, i presume = not mounted]. To restate that maybe more accurately, when i ran “df -h” just now in my Tower, one of its entries is:

/dev/mapper/cr_ata-Samsung_SSD_850_EVO_250GB_S21MNSAG105383J-part3  160G   37G  124G  23% /home

. There is NO equivalent of that appearing in the output in Lappy’s tty anymore, & of course there should be.

Prior to finding your reply, i did a quick little experiment on the unhappy Lappy. I booted it again then at the screen where i enter my password to supposedly decrypt & mount my /home, i deliberately entered a wrong string, to see how it would react. It immediately recognised that my password was wrong & prompted me to try again. This time i deliberately entered another wrong one, & it again saw my error & re-prompted me. This time i did enter my correct password, after which it proceeded on as normal to the standard TW login screen [where sadly i now always get stuck in groundhog day]. To me this experiment implies that TW is still aware of my correct encryption password… but for some reason is not correctly using it.

In a few minutes i am going to try to take a picture of Lappy’s tty2 screen showing the “blkid” & “df -h” outputs. If the picture is able to adequately show the text legibly i’ll then attempt to upload it here in a new post.

4

blkid picture, Lappy, tty2:

https://s7.postimg.org/qp7pu88qz/20171120_001.png

5

Yes, probably something like that.

However, if it cannot find “/home”, I would have expected it to boot into emergency mode. But if “/home” is okay, but you have an encrypted personal home directory, then it would probably do what you saw if something went wrong.

To restate that maybe more accurately, when i ran “df -h” just now in my Tower, one of its entries is:

/dev/mapper/cr_ata-Samsung_SSD_850_EVO_250GB_S21MNSAG105383J-part3  160G   37G  124G  23% /home

 .  There is NO equivalent of that appearing in the output in Lappy's tty anymore, & of course there should be.

Okay. But that’s for an encrypted home partition. For your laptop, I’m confused as to whether you have an encryped home partition, or an encrypted home directory.

6

df -h picture:

https://s7.postimg.org/4ejuu1dyz/20171120_003.png

Home & Swap are not mounted; bwaaaah.

Btw, i forgot to answer your other question – yes i do have backups, so if i have to go nuclear & do a full reinstallation, whilst being a major PITA it’s not actually catastrophic. What i am more worried about though is WHY this might have occurred, & if it has any implications for a pending similar event on my Tower = my primary pc]. Furthermore, until/unless the root cause is known, it now makes me wonder anew whether TW is right for me. That it happened at all is worrisome, & the discovery that even Snapper Rollbacks could not help, now potentially nullifies what up til now has been my unwavering support of BtrFS & Snapper with TW. However, without a proven cause, all that is just futile speculation.

7

Thank you, & i apologise. Despite my attempts over the months to sort this out in my head, & despite Henk’s previous valiant attempt to help me understand, i seem too dimwitted to get my terminology correct.

Here are 2 pics i took during my original installation of TW on Lappy earlier this year; do they fully & unambiguously answer your question?

https://s7.postimg.org/ubdj6rry3/20171120_004.png

https://s7.postimg.org/432ehf2pn/20171120_005.png

8

Okay, so that’s an encrypted partition for “/home” (and another for swap).

One possibility: something has changed in the partition naming. I suggest you check “/etc/crypttab”, and see whether the entries still identify disk partitions. The second column is probably of the form “/dev/disk/by-id/some-funky-string”.

Do an “ls -l” on whatever that shows. See if there is a device there (or a symbolic link to a partition).

9

Thanks. Yes “encrypted partition” was what i wanted to say, but i hesitated in case i got it wrong & then caused mass confusion.

Back in Lappy’s tty2, as root, i accessed “/etc/crypttab” & viewed its contents with nano. Fortunately in my Tower [my primary pc] i keep records of both Tower’s & Lappy’s customised [by me] system files, just in case… Here’s Lappy’s one, as customised by me back in July soon after installation:

 #cr_ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part4 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part4 none       none
cr_ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part4 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part4 none       luks,allow-discards
#cr_ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part5 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part5 none       none
cr_ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part5 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part5 none       luks,allow-discards

I carefully, visually, compared both active strings as above, to what nano is displaying now → still identical.

You said;

Do an “ls -l” on whatever that shows

Sorry but i don’t understand. How/where do i do that? Surely before i could do that, the device must be mounted [or decrypted, or “available”; sorry, but i still cannot master the essential concept here], but as my second pic df -h], above, showed already, there is NO…

/dev/mapper/cr_ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part5 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part5

, hence it is not mounted / available ?]

For comparison, fyi here is my Tower’s corresponding string from its “/etc/crypttab” for its encrypted partition on which /home is mounted:

cr_ata-Samsung_SSD_850_EVO_250GB_S21MNSAG105383J-part3 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Samsung_SSD_850_EVO_250GB_S21MNSAG105383J-part3 none       luks,allow-discards

…& here is that same device correctly listed in Tower’s df -h:

/dev/mapper/cr_ata-Samsung_SSD_850_EVO_250GB_S21MNSAG105383J-part3  160G   37G  124G  23% /home

As that earlier ***df -h ***picture showed for Lappy, its necessary

/dev/mapper/cr_ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part5 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part5

…is simply… missing, somehow. But it’s not like Lappy’s encrypted sda4 =swap] & sda5 =/home] partitions have “vaporised” & “ceased to be”, coz my first picture above blkid] still lists them both.

I’m very confused about what happened, out of the blue, yesterday… & what if anything i can do now.

10

After you have booted, and logged in at the console (as root or as yourself), do:

ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part4

It doesn’t matter if the disk is mounted and decrypted. This just checks whether the kernel is still recognizing that device-id.

Maybe, also do:

ls -l /dev/disk/by-id  |  grep sda4

I’m guessing that something has changed in how the device-id is calculated.

11

Thanks, Part 4 & /sda4 are my Lappy’s Swap. I assume you actually meant Part 5 & /sda5…?

12

As you can see, i did both. I don’t know if the output is good or bad. Sorry for the fuzziness; can you manage to read it ok?

https://s8.postimg.org/ot84aak91/20171121_001.png

13

Whats in /etc/fstab??

14 
/dev/mapper/cr_ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part4 swap swap defaults 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb / btrfs noatime 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /boot/grub2/i386-pc btrfs noatime,subvol=@/boot/grub2/i386-pc 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi btrfs noatime,subvol=@/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /opt btrfs noatime,subvol=@/opt 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /srv btrfs noatime,subvol=@/srv 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /usr/local btrfs noatime,subvol=@/usr/local 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/cache btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/cache 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/crash btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/crash 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/lib/libvirt/images btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/lib/libvirt/images 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/lib/machines btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/lib/machines 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/lib/mailman btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/lib/mailman 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/lib/mariadb btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/lib/mariadb 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/lib/mysql btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/lib/mysql 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/lib/named btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/lib/named 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/lib/pgsql btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/lib/pgsql 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/log btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/log 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/opt btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/opt 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/spool btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/spool 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /var/tmp btrfs noatime,subvol=@/var/tmp 0 0
UUID=59c063db-fa0d-4e1e-baa2-df255f4262fb /.snapshots btrfs noatime,subvol=@/.snapshots 0 0
UUID=411E-AE07       /boot/efi            vfat       noatime,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/mapper/cr_ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part5 /home                ext4       discard,noatime,acl,nofail    0 2
#tmpfs                /tmp                 tmpfs      noatime,size=25%      0 0
#tmpfs                /tmp                 tmpfs      noatime,size=256m      0 0
tmpfs                /tmp                 tmpfs      noatime,size=512m      0 0
15

Right. But it doesn’t really matter. I was wondering about an issue that would affect both of those.

In any case, your output seems to show that this was not the problem. And that leaves me puzzled as to what was the problem.

16

Thanks anyway.

Given i have the very distinct feeling that most others who have read this thread are / might be as mystified as me about [a] what happened? ** why? [c] how to repair it? , I have now thrown in the towel & gone semi-nuclear.

I was prepared & intending today to go full-nuclear, by which i mean a complete new installation with another distro [KDE Neon], given my shock that TW would do this to my Lappy despite openQA, & despite BtrFS+Snapper+Rollbacks. However i had forgotten how poor the Neon Installer is, compared to the wonderful Ruby. It would not allow me to reuse my encrypted home partition [groan, that’s not right, is it? Um, my [i]/dev/sda5** encrypted partition on which /home is mounted; is that right?] without formatting it, thus definitely losing everything *. So i abandoned that intended Neon installation, & am currently 40’ into the following…

I rebooted Lappy with my old “openSUSE-Tumbleweed-DVD-x86_64-Snapshot20170510-Media.iso” USB stick, with which i had initially migrated both my Tower & Lappy to TW earlier this year. I configured Ruby to reformat each partition [but still in same guise as original], except /dev/sda5 encrypted partition, which i set to reuse as-is. I knew this would cause Ruby to ask me for my existing encryption password, & my hope was that Ruby would still successfully then access that partition… which it did. Hence, the TW reinstallation is now in progress; given how lousy Australian “broadband” speeds are, it will be hours before this finishes.

Obviously i’ve now lost all my programs, so i’ll need to reinstall them again later, but at least IF this semi-nuclear option succeeds in saving my current /home then under the circumstances i’ll regard this as a win. All my data is safe on backups, so that’s not the main reason i have been keen to save Lappy’s /home if at all possible… it also has some VirtualBox VMs which due to size are not able to be backed up, & i’d much prefer not to lose them.

Fingers crossed that this works. I’m not putting my Neon USB stick back in the drawer just yet…*

17

Assuming that “Neon Installer” is the same thing as “Ubuntu installer”, this should not actually be a problem. Just omit that partition, and add it after install by editing “/etc/fstab” and “/etc/crypttab”.

However, Ubuntu does like “/etc/crypttab” to use UUID to identify the partition.

18

Thanks, i didn’t know i could do that.

It’s all finished [a bit faster than i’d expected; only 1:41’ today], & guess what? It is still broken, with identical symptoms to my original post. That is… it boots ok, it displays the “Please enter passphrase for disk primary [cr_ata-SAMSUNG_SSD_PM810_2.5__256GB_S0N4NEAZB01960-part5]” ok, it accepts my passphrase without error, it proceeds to the login screen, it accepts my password without error, & then… it proceeds to the login screen, it accepts my password without error, & then… it proceeds to the login screen, it accepts my password without error, & then…

What a waste of time, energy & bandwidth.

Now, where’s that other USB stick…?

19

I think that’s a different problem. There is something in your saved user settings that is causing a problem. If you can create a new user account, it will probably work for that user. (Login as root and run “yast” at the command line).

20

But i do have 2 user accounts already, & they both do this.