Arch Linux

asg1448

Member

Registered: 2014-04-12

Posts: 74

Cannot do anything after pacman -Syu yesterday

Did a `pacman -Syu` yesterday, and somehow that caused my computer to go crazy. First off, gdm won't start. I can not logon as a regular user. When I try to su to user I have this:

# su - user
su: warning: cannot change directory to /home/user: Permission denied
su: failed to execute /bin/bash: Permission denied

Nothing is wrong with home directory. I tried creating a new user with useradd, and then su to it, with the same effect. Bash has normal permissions:

# ls /bin/bash -l
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 791304 Sep 18 01:15 /bin/bash

journalctl is peppered with "permission denied" too:

Nov 07 00:18:14 melandru systemd-resolved[931]: Failed to watch hostname: Permission denied
Nov 07 00:18:14 melandru systemd-resolved[931]: Could not create manager: Permission denied
Nov 07 00:18:14 melandru systemd[1]: systemd-resolved.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Nov 07 00:18:14 melandru systemd[1]: Failed to start Network Name Resolution.
Nov 07 00:18:14 melandru systemd[1]: systemd-resolved.service: Unit entered failed state.
Nov 07 00:18:14 melandru systemd[1]: systemd-resolved.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Trying to start gdm produces this:

# systemctl start gdm
Error getting authority: Error initializing authority: Exhausted all available authentication mechanisms (tried: EXTERNAL, DBUS_COOKIE_SHA1, ANONYMOUS) (available: EXTERNAL, DBUS_COOKIE_SHA1, ANONYMOUS) (g-io-error-quark, 0)

can anyone say wtf is happening, and how to fix?

ayekat

Member

Registered: 2011-01-17

Posts: 1,634

Re: Cannot do anything after pacman -Syu yesterday

That's indeed pretty weird. What's the output of these commands?

id
id user
ls -ld /home /home/user
mount
getent passwd user

Last edited by ayekat (2015-11-07 16:29:39)

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pkgs │ hacks │ cfg │ blag

asg1448

Member

Registered: 2014-04-12

Posts: 74

Re: Cannot do anything after pacman -Syu yesterday

Here:

# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel),19(log),1002(fuse)

#id user
uid=1000(user) gid=1000(user) groups=1000(user),4(adm),5(tty),10(wheel),14(uucp),54(lock),90(network),91(video),92(audio),93(optical),96(scanner),78(kvm),142(docker),1001(lpadmin),1002(fuse)

# ls -ld /home /home/user
drwxr-xr-x    5 root   root   4096 Nov  7 08:34 /home
drwx--x---+ 141 user   user   4096 Nov  7 09:17 /home/user

# getent passwd user
user:x:1000:1000::/home/user:/bin/bash

I'm not putting here the output of the mount command, but it's normal, like before.

Also: restoring backup from 2 days ago fixed the problem. I use LVM, so I just created a new system volume and changed syslinux to boot from it

ugjka

Member

From: Latvia

Registered: 2014-04-01

Posts: 1,962

Website

Re: Cannot do anything after pacman -Syu yesterday

How often do you -Syu?
Post pacman log

dice

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2014-02-10

Posts: 413

Re: Cannot do anything after pacman -Syu yesterday

The plus sign in

drwx--x---+ 141 user   user   4096 Nov  7 09:17 /home/user

indicates that ACLs are active for that directory.
This might be the cause for the permission issues
Unfortunately I have never worked with those.

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I put at button on it. Yes. I wish to press it, but I'm not sure what will happen if I do.  (Gune | Titan A.E.)

ayekat

Member

Registered: 2011-01-17

Posts: 1,634

Re: Cannot do anything after pacman -Syu yesterday

getfacl /home/user

Although that still doesn't explain all the other permission issues...

EDIT ah, dice had me

Last edited by ayekat (2015-11-07 17:03:02)

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pkgs │ hacks │ cfg │ blag

asg1448

Member

Registered: 2014-04-12

Posts: 74

Re: Cannot do anything after pacman -Syu yesterday

The plus sign in

drwx--x---+ 141 user   user   4096 Nov  7 09:17 /home/user

indicates that ACLs are active for that directory.
This might be the cause for the permission issues
Unfortunately I have never worked with those.

I am aware of facls, and these are fine. The reasons I know are:

1. replacing system partition with backup made 2 days ago logs me in just fine (home is mounted on a diff partition, so nothing changed there)
2. Before restoring backup I tried creating a new user with useradd, which has created a home directory for it without facls, and I still could not su into it

twelveeighty

Member

Registered: 2011-09-04

Posts: 1,456

Re: Cannot do anything after pacman -Syu yesterday

As @ugjka mentioned earlier - post your pacman.log. This could have been caused by (accidentally) missing a .pacnew file.