Arch Linux

kiritsuku

Member

Registered: 2018-07-23

Posts: 6

[SOLVED] Can't login anymore after system upgrade

I just updated a system of mine (haven't updated anything for more than half a year) with pacman -Syu and after a reboot I can't login anymore. At least I think this is related to the package update because all other changes that I did were related to my user directory.

I used a live system to use chroot to get access to my system and changed the passwords of both my user and of root and I also created a new user but all of them can't login. The error message I get is only "Invalid credentials" or something like that. What can I do to figure out why the login process is no longer working? I already looked through the pacman update log but couldn't see anything important there, just a few warnings about pacnew files that don't seem to contain important changes. I also looked at /etc/passwd and /etc/shadows and a few other files but they are the same as they always were, maybe some configuration regarding login files is no longer acceptable?

Last edited by kiritsuku (2020-12-04 14:44:53)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,729

Re: [SOLVED] Can't login anymore after system upgrade

Did you merge your pacnew files? Especially those related to pam?

kiritsuku

Member

Registered: 2018-07-23

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] Can't login anymore after system upgrade

Not sure what pam is. I think I didn't get any warnings related to pam at all, at least I didn't merge any changes here.

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,729

Re: [SOLVED] Can't login anymore after system upgrade

Check the entire system for pacnew files, but the ones causing the problem are probably in /etc/pam.d/

kiritsuku

Member

Registered: 2018-07-23

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] Can't login anymore after system upgrade

Thanks, that was the right hint. In that directory there was a login.pacnew, which caused the problem. I replaced the original login file with the pacnew one and after that login is working again. I'm just surprised how I didn't notice that pacnew file. The filesystem tells me that it was created two weeks ago but I didn't touch that computer for half a year. Also, pacman logs only contain a reference to login.pacnew from 2012 and the original login file was from 2011! There is a ghost in the shell...

Anyway, thanks for the help!