Linux Mint 19 Tara

[slinger1953]

I want to get hold of LM19 Tara .iso for my friend who has issues with his system.
He cannot get passed his password which he knows is correct, when he enters it the screen goes black and then the password option reappears.
He cannot find his original .iso
I cant download it from anywhere that I have tried.
Any ideas please?
Thanks

[Pjotr]

Don't saddle your friend with an OS that's no longer supported. Give him 20.3 or, even better, 21.3.

[xenopeek]

He cannot get passed his password which he knows is correct, when he enters it the screen goes black and then the password option reappears.

I think common causes of that are:
1) user let the root partition fill up. If there's no disk space free the login can fail like that.
2) user ran GUI apps with sudo (bad user, bad bad user!). That can make it so key files are not writable by the user which can cause login to fail as well.

Is your friend handy on the terminal or can you visit to help them out?

First see if the disk is filled up:
- at the login screen press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to switch to the 1st virtual console (like a full screen terminal)
- log in with username and password there -- most likely that will work still
- run the command df -hx tmpfs to list the disk usage for each partition. Is the Use% of the / partition, or /home partition if they have it, above 95%? Then the action to take is to remove files to free up disk space

If the problem was not that the disk is filled up, try running find ~ -user root to check if any files in their home directory are owned by root. There shouldn't be any. If there are run sudo chown -Rv $USER: ~ to change ownership of those files back to the user. Then go back to the login screen with Ctrl+Alt+F7 (sometimes F8) and try logging in again.

If still having problems there is some other issue with the account. Create a new user account.
- go back to the virtual console with Ctrl+Alt+F1
- run sudo adduser newname where you replace "newname" with a new username, then follow the prompts to create it
- afterwards run sudo usermod -aG sudo newname, again replacing "newname" with the new username, to make the new user an administrator.
- then go back to the login screen with Ctrl+Alt+F7 (sometimes F8) and try logging in with the new user account.
- if that works, the cause is something on the original user account; it can likely be figured out from the journal message but at least they are now back on the desktop

And yes your friend should upgrade. Linux Mint 19 is end of life and should be considered unsafe to use online as it's not getting security updates since 1 year ago. Linux Mint 20.3 has just 1 year of support left so I would go with Linux Mint 21.3.

[slinger1953]

Thank you both for your very prompt replies.
Looking through some answers elsewhere the use of a live disk was suggested but he has misplaced his (Lost).
It is our intention to bring him up to date with 21.3 but if he cant get into the present o/s and makes a clean install won't he lose all of his personal stuff (and no, he has not made a backup, but will in future)
He lives some way away but I am visiting him Monday, it will be the blind leading the blind but I have a little more confidence than him,
We will follow the suggested advise and come back in the week!
Thank you very very much.

[Moem]

It is our intention to bring him up to date with 21.3 but if he cant get into the present o/s and makes a clean install won't he lose all of his personal stuff (and no, he has not made a backup, but will in future)

Bring a bootable USB stick with an up-to-date version of Mint when you visit, and another one that is empty and large.
Boot from the live Mint, and then insert the other USB stick in another port and move all the personal stuff to that. After that, do a clean install and put the stuff back.
That is the easiest and safest way by far.

[xenopeek]

For rescue purpose only the Linux Mint 19.3 ISO is still downloadable from mirrors. You can open any download mirror from here https://linuxmint.com/mirrors.php and browse to the stable/19.3 directory there to find the ISO file. For example this one: https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www ... able/19.3/.

But I'd follow Moem's suggestion first. If you have another USB stick also take the 19.3 with you as backup. Just in case there are issues booting the newer Linux Mint ISO you will at least have the 19.3 also with you as backup.

[AZM]

After I rebooted, I had exactly the same symptoms: going to the password prompt, logging in, and cycling back to the password prompt again. My filesystem disk partition was 80% full on LM 20.3.

I was able to boot into the root Terminal. If I had been more familiar with command-line Linux, I possibly could have resolved my problem and saved my 20.3 installation.

Long before my installation died, I had moved my Firefox profile from the internal drive to the external USB drive. I used a shortcut soft link (detailed below) to point the browser to its profile.

I bought a 21.3 Live DVD from an online vendor. As seen from the DVD, my installation was owned by User 1000. I used sudo chown to change ownership of my home files and everything on my external drive to belong to the DVD user. This allowed me to move my home under 20.3 to my external drive. I then installed a fresh 21.3 from the DVD on my internal drive.

I booted 21.3 and found my external drive was owned by User 999, so I retook ownership with the same sudo chown mentioned earlier, just using a different owner name:

Code: Select all

sudo chown -R owner:

The -R makes ownership recursive, thus applying changes to everything in the folder. The colon after the owner adds the owner's group of the same name as the owner.

I have a new Firefox and a brand new profile. This snafu did not affect my old profile, which has all my bookmarks and passwords. It lives on the other drive. To reconnect to my stuff, I removed the "firefox" folder from ~/.mozilla/and put the shortcut there once again.

Here was my procedure to create the shortcut:

Code: Select all

ln -s /path-to/firefox/ /home/user/.mozilla/firefox

I am making a soft link (ln -s). The first path is where the shortcut points and the second path names the shortcut and locates it. Both the target folder and the shortcut are named "firefox". If you copy my code, change the path to your profile folder and replace "user" with your username.

I can't offer any direct help to the OP, but I can share my experience. Uncanny that we both had the same symptom.

[slinger1953]

Sorry for long delay in answering, problem is now solved with a complete new install of LM21.3 , he's a happy boy!
thank you all.

[Moem]

Hurray, good job!

[Dan-cer]

I'm glad to see threads like this where different experienced Linux users complement each other so well and provide expert advice! Thanks for making this happen here!