default os: loop while login as rock

[gritibaenz]

Hi there

I'm using a Pinebook Pro with default OS.

Problem: Suddenly I cannot login as user rock anymore. Giving the credentials it loops and shows the login mask again and again.

I created another user before (they worked well in parallel) which is still usable.

I used User rock for update purposes. And now I do not have the update button in the lower right side anymore.

Any idea how to fix the login or do I have to reinstall from scatch?

Any help / tip is very welcome. - Thanks

Regards Adrian

[hmuller]

Hi Adrian,

Based on the problem you are describing, I suspect you may have changed the 'rock' user password.

If you added your new user to the sudo group, you can change the rock user password from your new user account by running the following within a terminal:

Code:

$ sudo passwd rock

If you did not add your new user to the sudo group, and you can run the following in a terminal to switch to the root user:

Code:

$ su root

And then enter the root user password (if you did not change it, the root password is 'root' without quotes). Then you can run the following within a terminal to change the rock password:

Code:

$ passwd rock

Regardless of how you restore the rock password, should you ever accidentally remove the update button, you can always run the following within a terminal to update the default Debian desktop shipped by the manufacturer:

Code:

$ sudo mrfixit_update.sh

[gritibaenz]

Hi Adrian,

Based on the problem you are describing, I suspect you may have changed the 'rock' user password.

If you added your new user to the sudo group, you can change the rock user password from your new user account by running the following within a terminal:

Code:

$ sudo passwd rock

If you did not add your new user to the sudo group, and you can run the following in a terminal to switch to the root user:

Code:

$ su root

And then enter the root user password (if you did not change it, the root password is 'root' without quotes). Then you can run the following within a terminal to change the rock password:

Code:

$ passwd rock

Regardless of how you restore the rock password, should you ever accidentally remove the update button, you can always run the following within a terminal to update the default Debian desktop shipped by the manufacturer:

Code:

$ sudo mrfixit_update.sh

Hello hmuller,

thanks for your detailed help.

Actually I followed your steps for solving this issue, but unfortunately resetting user's rock password to default passwd rock did not help.
It does still loop back to the login window. (After entering the credential the screen is black for 1-2 seconds and the login window appears again.)

Anyway this is not that important since you mentioned :
 

Code:

$ sudo mrfixit_update.sh

So I can still update the system as my other user.

thanks again. All the best for 2020!

Regards, Adrian

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

< SNIP >

Anyway this is not that important since you mentioned :
 

Code:

$ sudo mrfixit_update.sh

So I can still update the system as my other user.

thanks again. All the best for 2020!

Regards, Adrian

It's a good idea to add sudo and include your user by group membership to sudoers. If for nothing else but these occasions.
If you want to then change a forgotten root user password, "sudo su -" gets you a root shell with environment, and then a regular "passwd" will change root, without asking for previous shadow entry.

This also helps when you are running things that sudo has difficulty with - such as some scripts. I hate editing these to prepend extra "sudo" commands to lines.

[hmuller]

@gritibaenz,

keymap issues drop to the bottom of the list of potential problems as the problem still occurs after resetting the password to "rock".

Now check the ownership of /home/rock/.Xauthority and /home/rock/.ICEauthority. From your second user account, open a console and login to the rock user: Ctrl-Alt-F1

Then run the following command to list the ownership of both files:

Code:

$ ls -l {.Xauthority,.ICEauthority}

The ownership of both files should look like this:

Code:

-rw------- 1 rock rock 66374 Dec 31 11:02 .ICEauthority
-rw------- 1 rock rock   378 Dec 31 11:02 .Xauthority

If the owner/group does not show 'rock rock', then correct that using:

Code:

$ sudo chown rock:rock /home/rock/.Xauthority

or

$ sudo chown rock:rock /home/rock/.ICEauthority

Exit the console, return to your X11 session: Ctrl-Alt-F7

Logout of X11 and attempt to login as rock, let me know if any of the above was the culprit.

[gritibaenz]

@hmuller
Thanks again - this way I could manage to login as rock again.

The Problem raises when following https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro :

...
You can change the default rock username and rock home directory by logging into root (credentials root/root) instead of the default 'rock' user and running the following in root terminal and substituting desired username for NewUser:

Code:

usermod -l NewUser rock
usermod -d /home/rock -m NewUser

...
which I did for my newuser. But doing it that way, it seems that user rock and user NewUser are not independent.
because now I cannot login as NewUser anymore and the user:group for /home/NewUser/* is rock.rock .

What I wanted was, clone user rock and have an independent NewUser (based on user rock). - So I'll try to remove NewUser completely and create a NewUser with  the command useradd ...

Do you have suggestions how to do that?

---

[gritibaenz]

< SNIP >

Anyway this is not that important since you mentioned :
 

Code:

$ sudo mrfixit_update.sh

So I can still update the system as my other user.

thanks again. All the best for 2020!

Regards, Adrian

It's a good idea to add sudo and include your user by group membership to sudoers. If for nothing else but these occasions.
If you want to then change a forgotten root user password, "sudo su -" gets you a root shell with environment, and then a regular "passwd" will change root, without asking for previous shadow entry.

This also helps when you are running things that sudo has difficulty with - such as some scripts. I hate editing these to prepend extra "sudo" commands to lines.

Thanks for your hints.

Adrian

[dlester1964d]

I am having almost this exact same issue with it seeming to be in a loop when trying to login as rock.  I have also created another user and have the same issue with this other user logon.  I can only login as root.  Did anyone solve this issue?

---

I have checked the ownership of /home/rock/.Xauthority and /home/rock/.ICEauthority as suggested above and it appears correct. But I am unable to login as rock.

[gritibaenz]

Hi,

I have another user (in addition to rock) created following https://phoenixnap.com/kb/create-a-sudo-user-on-debian

Bye Gritibaenz