Leap 15.0 installation: I cannot access to my user content from a previous 42.3 version.

Hi, I just installed Leap 15.0 on a previous 42.3 version. However, after booting the new installation, my user content in home from the previous version does not appear in the new home. During the Leap 15.0 installation I’ve marked “Import user data from a previous installation” and then selected my user, but it seems something is not working well. If someone can help me I really appreciate it.

This is unclear. Does it mean you added a new installation, or replaced an existing installation?

However, after booting the new installation, my user content in home from the previous version does not appear in the new home. During the Leap 15.0 installation I’ve marked “Import user data from a previous installation”
I don’t do this, so have no expectation, but I would think it would only import settings, not other data like documents, pictures or videos.

and then selected my user, but it seems something is not working well. If someone can help me I really appreciate it.
If you would post the content of /etc/fstab and the output from

fdisk -l

here using the code tag from the # in the reply composition menu we should be able to tell you precise steps to take.

Do you have a separate home partition and is it mounted as /home?

Did you do a NEW install or an UPGRADE? Does the UID of the newly defined user match the original UID? Normally it may be 1000 but you may have defined things differently??

Exactly, the UID of the newly defined user is 1000, but I don’t know what was the original UID.

An additional action I’ve executed after detecting my original user content wasn’t present in the new home, was to rename the user and generate a new user with the same name than
the original, by using the “User and Group Management” option from the Yast. Now, the UID of the renamed user is 1000 and the UID of the new user 1001. However, after rebooting, I can’t login as this last user, I can only login as the renamed user. I’ve installed other previous opensuse versions but I’ve never experienced this problem. Many thanks for any help.

Many thanks for your help.
The content of /etc/fstab is:


UUID=bf41d6fd-7075-48a5-aae2-98e67d62465c / btrfs defaults 0 0
UUID=bf41d6fd-7075-48a5-aae2-98e67d62465c /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi btrfs subvol=/@/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi 0 0
UUID=bf41d6fd-7075-48a5-aae2-98e67d62465c /boot/grub2/i386-pc btrfs subvol=/@/boot/grub2/i386-pc 0 0
UUID=bf41d6fd-7075-48a5-aae2-98e67d62465c /.snapshots btrfs subvol=/@/.snapshots 0 0
UUID=bf41d6fd-7075-48a5-aae2-98e67d62465c /var btrfs subvol=/@/var 0 0
UUID=bf41d6fd-7075-48a5-aae2-98e67d62465c /usr/local btrfs subvol=/@/usr/local 0 0
UUID=bf41d6fd-7075-48a5-aae2-98e67d62465c /tmp btrfs subvol=/@/tmp 0 0
UUID=bf41d6fd-7075-48a5-aae2-98e67d62465c /srv btrfs subvol=/@/srv 0 0
UUID=bf41d6fd-7075-48a5-aae2-98e67d62465c /root btrfs subvol=/@/root 0 0
UUID=bf41d6fd-7075-48a5-aae2-98e67d62465c /opt btrfs subvol=/@/opt 0 0
UUID=bcc75ce2-47a5-45e0-93f8-fdd5edd56a2e /home xfs defaults 0 0
UUID=eb4ba7d3-bf48-42d0-a169-7790d4d88e1a swap swap defaults 0 0

The output of fdisk .-l is:

linux-wavh:~ # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 238.5 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x2b8d6139

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 2048 4208639 4206592 2G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 4208640 46153727 41945088 20G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 46153728 130039807 83886080 40G 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 130039808 500118191 370078384 176.5G f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda5 130041856 492251135 362209280 172.7G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 492253184 500118191 7865008 3.8G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
linux-wavh:~ #

Depends on exactly what you’re trying to access.

Sounds like you installed new and then tried to import data.
That would mean that your User(s) would have generated completely new identifiers for every User, and that would mean that every User would be seen as completely different than previous Users even if they have the same name and even UID.

So,
Any data that isn’t encrypted or obfuscated based on the User’s identity can be imported and used.
But any data that might have been encrypted using the User’s identity might not be usable again.

TSU

From fdisk -l and fstab it looks like there is a partition unaccounted for, so please also provide

# blkid

so we can see which one.

And

mount | grep /dev/

BTW the option to import user data is about data about the users. It means that the installer has found out that there is already an openSUSE installation on the system and it asks if it has to take over the users and groups that are configured there (in /etc/passwd, /etc/group and /etc/shadow). It is NOT about the data belonging to the users.

This also means that you installed the 15.0 fresh and did not simply upgrade 42.3 to 15.0 (which IMHO would have been much easier).

But during the partitioning part of the installation you seem to have missed the partition for /home (if there is one). I assume that the installer has suggested to mount that partition again on /home, but something went wrong there.

=============

And another hint about the using of these forums (you are new here, WELCOME!):

There is an important, but not easy to find feature on the forums.

Please in the future use CODE tags around copied/pasted computer text in a post. It is the # button in the tool bar of the post editor. When applicable copy/paste complete, that is including the prompt, the command, the output and the next prompt.

Many thanks for trying to help me


linux-wavh:~ # blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="2b7818f4-b293-4413-bf29-61d8aface509" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="2b8d6139-01"
/dev/sda2: UUID="f1aa6711-7167-4d74-88e4-640efc3dde0f" UUID_SUB="16aa19fe-aa74-478b-90f2-fa9edbf90d2a" TYPE="btrfs" PTTYPE="dos" PARTUUID="2b8d6139-02"
/dev/sda3: UUID="bf41d6fd-7075-48a5-aae2-98e67d62465c" UUID_SUB="20332348-b8a7-4d26-9daf-2da73af760ba" TYPE="btrfs" PARTUUID="2b8d6139-03"
/dev/sda5: UUID="bcc75ce2-47a5-45e0-93f8-fdd5edd56a2e" TYPE="xfs" PARTUUID="2b8d6139-05"
/dev/sda6: UUID="eb4ba7d3-bf48-42d0-a169-7790d4d88e1a" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="2b8d6139-06"
linux-wavh:~ # 

Adding my 2 cents: since apparently there might be two Linux installations on that disk, “Import users” might behave in an unexpected way, see https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1003616
If the original /home partition was not re-formatted or overwritten during the new install, data from the original users should still be there. Maybe you have to mount that partition and check if the files you are looking for tare owned by an UID <> 1000, but then those files should be accessible by an user with matching UID, or you should be able to chown them to your liking.
But please stop tinkering with user names unless you are sure about what you are doing: Linux checks permissions based on UIDs, but the /home folders of default users are usually named after their “user names”.

Thanks again Henk. I apologize the lack of detailedness.


linux-wavh:~ # mount | grep /dev/
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
/dev/sda3 on / type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=267,subvol=/@/.snapshots/1/snapshot)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime)
hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/sda3 on /tmp type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=260,subvol=/@/tmp)
/dev/sda3 on /srv type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=261,subvol=/@/srv)
/dev/sda5 on /home type xfs (rw,relatime,attr2,inode64,noquota)
/dev/sda3 on /opt type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=263,subvol=/@/opt)
/dev/sda3 on /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=264,subvol=/@/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi)
/dev/sda3 on /boot/grub2/i386-pc type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=265,subvol=/@/boot/grub2/i386-pc)
/dev/sda3 on /usr/local type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=259,subvol=/@/usr/local)
/dev/sda3 on /.snapshots type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=266,subvol=/@/.snapshots)
/dev/sda3 on /root type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=262,subvol=/@/root)
/dev/sda3 on /var type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=258,subvol=/@/var)
linux-wavh:~ # 

OK, so to rephrase my previous post, maybe you copied user details from the partition on /dev/sda2 and that scrambled the name of the user home folder currently recognized for UID=1000, but your original user documents should still be visible (at least by the superuser) on /home/<some old username> since apparently you always used /dev/sda5 as /home and hopefully you didn’t re-format it during your last install.

Hm, this was your original problem description:

This is just for your leaning curve, so please do not take this as if I am trying to turn you down.
I hope you see now that the information you provided was very minimal. What everybody here did assume wsa that you had a pretty standard installation with a /, a /home and a swap partition, maybe also multi bot with a Windows partition.

In fact you have five partitions in use for Linux, most probably used by two different installations.
Please, as a systems manager/administrator, you should at least have an idea what partitions are on your disks and where you use them for.

As remarked above, the system where you which you are running when creating the listings uses /dev/sda3 for / and /dev/sda5 for /home and /dev/sda6 for Swap.

Then there is /dev/sda1 which is also a Swap partition (but unused) and /dev/sda2 that “looks” as if it is also a Linux system’s / file system.

Now a few questions about what you have and did.
What Linux system(s) did you have before you started the 15.0 installation? One or two. And when two, what is the other one?
On the installation of 15.0, the installer tried to help you when it found (at least one) other installation and offered you the opportunity to take over some of it’s configuration (specially users). What did you do the be sure it used the correct installation (if there were two on the system) for these take overs?

Before this problem, I was only running 42.3 version. No other opensuse version, no other linux, no windows.
I’ve been an opensuse user for many years, but I don’t have a deep knowledge on low level details.
Due to such limitation, I’ve never changed sensitive aspects during installation as the configuration of partitions, for instance.
And this last installation wasn’t the exception.

In that case, I assume that the installation of 15.0 is not OVER, but BESIDE the 42.3 installation.

My suggestion is to try to boot from /dev/sda2 (doesn’t 42.3 show in your GRUB menu?) and you will find your old system with all whistles and bells, including the data of the users in their home directories.

When that is the case, we could start working from there to bring you to a 51.0.

From the GRUB menu I’ve selected the third option “openSUSE Leap 42.3 (on /dev/sda2)”. After a while appears the message “You are in emergency mode. After logging in …”, then I’ve
entered the root password. However, the content of the home directory here is empty. Please, tell how to follow.

Hi.:wink:

What desktop are you using? I am going to see if I can dig out more information about what is going on.

I see that you have a DOS formatted disk with 4 (the maximum allowed) Primary Partitions. The 4th Primary Partition is the special Extended Partition. In there, you have two Logical Partitions, one is 172.7 G so probably (I guess) contains your data? The other is a swap partition.

sda1 is a swap.
sda2 is (possibly) a System Partition, it is BTRFS (but only 20 G, not big enough for BTRFS to work properly). Note that this is where the BOOT FLAG is set.
sda3 is (possibly) another System Partition, again BTRFS, and is a more suitable 40 G.
sda4 is, as I said, the special Extended Partition to contain the next two partitions.
sda5 is the suspected DATA partition I mentioned above, possibly /home?
sda6 is another swap partition. (You only need one).

We need to determine what is in each partition.

The easiest way to do that, for lesser experienced, would be for me to know what desktop you are using, then I will give instructions.

Since I added the following part (in red) as an edit after posting, you may have missed it, but it is important to know.

Thanks for any help. My current desktop is kde.

As I’ve said before, I’ve didn’t change the configuration partition suggested by Leap 15.0 installation process.