Unable to login in to my machine

[rmcellig]

I am trying to login to my computer but every time I enter my name and password, I keep getting the login window again. I am currently logged in as Guest. My caps lock key is not on. What should I do? Is there a way I can somehow maybe reset my user name/password credentials? What are my options?

I am running Mint 12.

[xenopeek]

If the password you enter for your account is incorrect, it will say so at the login screen. Just above the password box it will say in red letters "Invalid password, please try again". Is this the case?

To be able to recover from this, you have to recall your password. No, I'm not being funny From the GRUB boot menu (hold shift during boot if you have not enabled it by default) select "Recovery mode", which will allow you to select to enter a root console. However, to do so, you need to know the initial password of the user you created during the installation of Linux Mint. If for some reason you changed your initial password for your user after installation, you may be able to login to the root console with your original password and there run the command:

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passwd username

where you replace username with your username. You can then set a new password for your user. Warning: do not do this if you have an encrypted home folder, as this will not work with encrypted home folders.

The other possibility is that you have installed some software or configured something, only on your user account (i.e., not on the guest account), which is somehow crashing your session so you get kicked back to the login screen. In that case, try to choose a different session to run for your user. Do so from the little gearwheel icon in the top right of the login box. For example choose MATE if you normally run GNOME, or vice versa. If that works, you can try to fix what you did before or failing that just create a new user to start with a clean slate.

[rmcellig]

Thanks! My pasword is just my first name lowercase. It's on my test laptop. I installed Fubuntu in sda5. Mint is in sda4. Ever since I did this, I have had problems logging into my mint12 partition. I reformatted sda5 so there is nothing in that partition at the moment. I also tried different enviroments from the gear when I login in and it still kicks me back to the login window.

You suggested starting up and when I get to the GRUB menu press the shift key. After I hold down the shift key, whaqt do I select from the GRUB menu? I'm just aq little unclear on this. So once I get in as root I type passwd randy (my username), and then change my password and restart my machine?

If for some reason I want to create a new user, how do I do this?

Thanks!!!

[xenopeek]

If the password you enter for your account is incorrect, it will say so at the login screen. Just above the password box it will say in red letters "Invalid password, please try again". Is this the case?

Did you confirm this? That in fact the problem is your password?

if so proceed. If you already see the GRUB boot menu, there is no need to hold down shift It is only for getting the GRUB boot menu to show if it wasn't shown by default on your computer. From the GRUB boot menu select to boot the "recovery mode". Probably the second entry in the menu. You will be presented with another text menu afterwards, where you need to select "drop to root console" or something similar. IIRC, on Linux Mint 12 it asks you for the root password, which is the same as the initial password you gave for the user created during the installation of Linux Mint. If that is randy, then that is what you enter. Then you can run the "passwd username" command to change the password of your own user account. After reboot you should be able to login with that.

And again, warning, do not do this if you have an encrypted home folder, as this will not work with encrypted home folders and in fact will break your system.

[rmcellig]

I was able to find the GRUB2 menu so now I should be able to follow the instructions above. Will post back results.

[rmcellig]

I am in Root in the Recovery Menu. It says Give root password for maintenance. I type my password and then I get:

randymint ~ #

I type in passwd randy and put in my new password

I get the following:

passwd :Authentication token manipulation error
passwd: password unchanged

What does this mean and what should I do?
As a note, When I go into user accounts while in Guest access, I can see my account called Randy but am unable to do anything with it because I am logged in as guest. At least I know I still have an account

[rmcellig]

If the password you enter for your account is incorrect, it will say so at the login screen. Just above the password box it will say in red letters "Invalid password, please try again". Is this the case?

Did you confirm this? That in fact the problem is your password?

.

I don't get an incorrect password notice in red when I type my password on login. I just keep getting returned to the login window so I would assume that my password is OK and that something else is going on here? What should I do next?

[rmcellig]

I was able to access tty2. I have a login prompt so I typed randy. password prompt i typed in randy. I get a Welcome to Linux Mint.

Also listed is 7 packages can be updated so I assume that I am logged in correctly?

Also listed is this:

No directory, logging in with Home=/

I have my home directory on a seperate partition.

When I do a cd home and then ls, I can see my user folder randy. when I do a cd randy I get this:\


-bash: cd: randy: Permission denied

I have a feeling that this is what is causing the problem when I am trying to log in? Make sense?

Where do I go from here?

[xenopeek]

Aha. Please from the virtual terminal run the following two commands and share the output here. Probably the mount command for your home partition is using a /dev/sdaX notation, which would now possibly refer to another or non-existing partition because you added a partition for the other OS you installed. You will likely have to edit your /etc/fstab file and correct it there (normally you use UUIDs for mounting in /etc/fstab, to avoid these problems).

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cat /etc/fstab
sudo sfdisk -l

To get the UUIDs of your partitions, run:

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sudo blkid

To edit your /etc/fstab, run (Ctrl+O to save the file after edit, Ctrl+X to exit):

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sudo nano /etc/fstab

In your /etc/fstab you will need to find the faulty line that mounts the /home partition and replace the /dev/sdaX at the start of the line with either the correct /dev/sdaX or with UUID=your_partitions_uuid. Just post the output of the first two commands above for help on this

[rmcellig]

Thanks but how do I post the output when I am in a virtual desktop on my other machine (the one that is having the problems?). I am posting this on my other laptop that also has Mint 12.

[xenopeek]

Doh Sorry...

Okay, different approach:

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grep /home /etc/fstab

That should output one line, and the kicker is what does it say at the start? Something like /dev/sdaX? Note it down. Then boot from your Linux Mint installation CD/DVD/USB and run the following command, hopefully from there you can put it here:

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sudo parted -l

You may also just run the above command from your virtual terminal, in either case you will also have to look at the list of partitions it gives and hopefully be able to say "yes, that partition's size matches my /home partition!"

[Richard Kimber]

I have just installed Mint 12 and I have the same problem. I also have a separate /home partition, but that seems to have been mounted OK. Although fstab says /home was on /dev/sda5 during installation, but mount reports "/dev/sdb5 on /home". I can log on as a guest, and I've also found that my password is accepted at the terminal, so I can su to my account. I've also been able to set up a root password. I've tried changing my password with the passwd command, but I still can't log in.

So the situation now is that I can log in as root, and as guest, but the login manager doesn't accept me, even though the system settings say I'm the administrator ... aaarrggh.

[rmcellig]

This my output for the cat command:

#home was on /dev/sda8 during installation
UUID=5ab25852-oab3-4153-8c05-382b3421a140 /home

[rmcellig]

I am now booted from my Mint 12 installer CD.

Here is the output when I ran sudo parted -l

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 106MB 105MB primary ntfs
2 106MB 170GB 170GB primary ntfs
4 170GB 259GB 88.4GB primary ext4 boot
3 259GB 495GB 236GB extended
8 259GB 308GB 49.2GB logical ext4
5 308GB 356GB 48.3GB logical ext4
7 356GB 491GB 135GB logical ext4
6 491GB 495GB 3610MB logical linux-swap(v1)

[rmcellig]

The partition for my home directory is listed as /dev/sda8

In the above command it is listed as sda7. Do I just have to change the number from sda8 to sda7 in my fstab file and everything should work OK after that?

[xenopeek]

This my output for the cat command:

#home was on /dev/sda8 during installation
UUID=5ab25852-oab3-4153-8c05-382b3421a140 /home

This means your /etc/fstab is already using UUIDs, which are unique per partition and adding partitions shouldn't mess anything. That line is incomplete though, and this will not succesfully mount a partition! I hope you cut it short so as not to type too much...

You can try with:

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sudo blkid

to check if the UUID is correct for /dev/sda7. Alternatively you may want to edit your /etc/fstab and replace the UUID=5ab25852-oab3-4153-8c05-382b3421a140 at the beginning of that line with /dev/sda7 so as to try if that will work.

[Richard Kimber]

I have just installed Mint 12 and I have the same problem. I also have a separate /home partition, but that seems to have been mounted OK. Although fstab says /home was on /dev/sda5 during installation, but mount reports "/dev/sdb5 on /home". I can log on as a guest, and I've also found that my password is accepted at the terminal, so I can su to my account. I've also been able to set up a root password. I've tried changing my password with the passwd command, but I still can't log in.

So the situation now is that I can log in as root, and as guest, but the login manager doesn't accept me, even though the system settings say I'm the administrator ... aaarrggh.

So is the only remedy to re-install the system?

[xenopeek]

You can try with:

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sudo blkid

to check if the UUID is correct for /dev/sda7. Alternatively you may want to edit your /etc/fstab and replace the UUID=5ab25852-oab3-4153-8c05-382b3421a140 at the beginning of that line with /dev/sda7 so as to try if that will work.

So all I have to do is type /dev/sda7 instead of the uuid that is there already?

I was thinking of booting from my puppy Linux cd do that I can move all of my files off my /HOME partition.

[xenopeek]

I'm not sure if you are misunderstanding me, but yeah as a workaround you may try replacing FULLY UUID=5ab25852-oab3-4153-8c05-382b3421a140 with /dev/sda7 on that line in /etc/fstab.

I'd prefer if you check with sudo blkid if the UUID of /dev/sda7 matches 5ab25852-oab3-4153-8c05-382b3421a140 instead though. If that matches, still something else is wrong.

[Richard Kimber]

I have just installed Mint 12 and I have the same problem. I also have a separate /home partition, but that seems to have been mounted OK. Although fstab says /home was on /dev/sda5 during installation, but mount reports "/dev/sdb5 on /home". I can log on as a guest, and I've also found that my password is accepted at the terminal, so I can su to my account. I've also been able to set up a root password. I've tried changing my password with the passwd command, but I still can't log in.

So the situation now is that I can log in as root, and as guest, but the login manager doesn't accept me, even though the system settings say I'm the administrator ... aaarrggh.

So is the only remedy to re-install the system?

OK the solution to my problem was to go to a console (ctrl-alt-F1) log in and do:
rm .Xauthority and then reboot.

For some reason the .Xauthority file that had initially been created was an empty file owned by root, so people with similar problems might like to examine their ~/.Xauthority file