User login fails

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Here is the situation. Yesterday I installed 11.2, gnome, on a desktop box, all seemed to go well. I shut down at night to save power. Login the next day (today), as user, fails silently. Login screen shows full name, I enter pw, and screen goes black as tho it is getting ready to start the desktop. Then the login screen comes back.

I can login as root. Pw’s are NOT the same.

  1. I checked the settings. User is not denied login. Assigned user to groups root, users, video, sshd, wheel.
  2. Changed pw. Restart. Login failed.
  3. Changed pw again, in case special characters were causing pw recognition fail, used all alpha-num. Restart. Login fail.
  4. Delete user. Save. Recreate user. Save. restart. Login fail.

Weird. I look in /var for logs that might help. Don’t really know what I’m looking for, but I look. I don’t find anything relevant (nvidia fail, but I knew that, and that doesn’t seem like it should be it. BUT, in the Windows world, I know having a problem vid driver could cause weird, illogical stuff like this, so I will also continue to attempt to resolve the nvidia issue).

What’s up with this? Or, where should I look?

2

You need to confirm that you actually have the diskspace. I’ve seen /var/log/messages and /var/log/warning, between the two of them, take over 100 GB of disk space when my PC was not configured the way it should have been. That caused the precise symptoms you just reported.

If those files are massive, a simple delete of them will cure the problem.

You could type:
df -Th
and post what you get.

3

If ‘df-Th’ is not a typo you can use command-not-found to lookup the package that contains it, like this:
cnf df-Th

Oops, it helps if I add a space in there!
df -Th

Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb2 ext4 7.6G 3.6G 3.7G 50% /
udev tmpfs 1012M 452K 1012M 1% /dev
/dev/sda2 ext3 12G 7.2G 4.0G 65% /home
/dev/sda1 ext3 6.7G 6.1G 177M 98% /media/beb518d4-659e-43ff-8257-3cd5bcf29301

The full one is a Debian install, not in use for this function. Hmm. Not that.

I’m still working on the nvidia - I have to go back and revisit the whole how-to to make it work. How quickly we forget! I’m wondering if it isn’t a rights issue somewhere.

4

ok, you have sufficient disk space. Your problem is clearly elsewhere.

5

ok, you have sufficient disk space. Your problem is clearly elsewhere.

What! That’s it? That’s all you have to say??? I’m on my own again???

rotfl!

Thanks for taking a shot at it!

6

Oooo- wait a sec - maybe this is pertinent - I reused my old /home. What login settings or vid settings are stored in /home?? Any?

Or do I say juuuuust a thot!

7

create a user with a different name. Can you log in as that user?

8

Aha!

[although I’m not sure aha WHAT!]

Created a diff user, and I can login as that user. I can’t login with the same user name I was using in Debian, which created the /home I’m using.

So, this would be obvious, then, must be something in /home!?

9

The user id is actually just a number. The name is just a convince for us meat bags. Distros may assign user ID (UID) numbers differently or maybe the user in question was not the first user in system. Suse starts numbering at 1000. So try setting the UID for the account in question to the UID reported as owner of that home directory.

10

Quite correct, quite correct. I think all the distros I’ve tried this year tho, use 1000 to start first user. UID that works now is 1001. I’m still optimistic that this is actually the source of whatever problem is occurring.

I’m not sure if I’ll bother fixing it tho, but I’ll have to think on it - I’m probably going to dump the Debian install for now anyway. I’ve been very unhappy with their forums - a lot of hostility there. Also, I have many motives - finding distros I like, but also where I’m learning something that might be valuable in corporate-space.

Anyway, I can login as non-root, so for current time, problem has got a work-around solution! Good enuff.

Thank you, all.

11

Oh - also, I WILL try messing with the UID’s when I start trying to narrow down what is going on. It might be very educational.

Thx!

12

Update for the record. When installing a new distro, and re-using home, it will probably work more smoothly if you use a different user name, OR delete all the old configuration files and directories from your /home/youroldusername/ directory.

When I removed all the hidden directories and files, I could login with the old user name, no problem. I’ve moved some of the configurations back, but I haven’t narrowed down which ones were the culprit (and I probably won’t work at finding out, either).

Also for the record, the UID for the user name in question was the same for both distros: 1000.

13

spokesinger <spokesinger@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> writes:

> Update for the record. When installing a new distro, and re-using home,
> it will probably work more smoothly if you use a different user name, OR
> delete all the old configuration files and directories from your
> /home/youroldusername/ directory.
>
> When I removed all the hidden directories and files, I could login with
> the old user name, no problem. I’ve moved some of the configurations
> back, but I haven’t narrowed down which ones were the culprit (and I
> probably won’t work at finding out, either).
>
> Also for the record, the UID for the user name in question was the same
> for both distros: 1000.

In my experience it’s so much easier to just backup /home and copy back
once installed.

Deleting the hidden files should work, and is essentially the same
thing.

I wouldn’t recommend trying to reuse hidden files.

–
Regards,
Barry Nichols

14

You might not want to delete hidden directories though since that is where email a and other data you might want to keep is stored. I added a new drive when I installed 11.2. I was on 10.2. I let the installer create my home then I have been moving files over from the old drive, from which I mounted the old home as /old, as as I need them. Worked great for me and I can still boot back to 10.2 if I really need to.

I can say this even with the new eye candy 11.2 runs about 30% faster then 10.2 on the same hardware.