[SOLVED] User profile usually disappears after system boot

thabulos · 2021-06-20 15:37:22

Hello All,

This is my first ever post on Arch Linux Forums. I have been running Arch Linux on my Lenovo T580 for about 3 years now and I haven't had the need to post anything because the Arch Linux community has been so great and I've usually found all my answers online, except for this one. It doesn't seem I am searching for the right keywords or maybe no one has this issue?

In the last few months, I would say 9 out of 10 times when I boot up my laptop my user profile is missing. The process I usually do to restore my profile is the following: 1) login as root, 2) go to /home folder, 3) rename my user profile folder to /home/david_old 4) delete my profile with userdel david 5) create new user from Gnome control center with the same username david 6) Go back to /home folder and delete the new /home/david folder 7) rename /home/david_old to /home/david 8) log out of root 9) log in with user profile david.

I have to do this 9 out of every 10 times and whenever I randomly reboot successfully I think some sort of update fixed my issue only to find it re-appear again on next boot up.

I thought I had a corrupt profile, so I created a new one, but the same issue happens. It's gone from GDM on next boot. Logging into the root from GDM always works.

I'm always using the latest Linux-zen kernel. I'm on F2FS. I "yay -Syu" daily. My /home folder is in a separate partition.

If you tell me what logs to grab, I am happy to do that. I just don't know where to even begin to troubleshoot this. That is why I am turning to this community for the first time. I am trying to avoid doing a fresh install because I've made hundreds of tweaks to this system.

Last edited by thabulos (2021-06-27 01:10:14)

Lone_Wolf · 2021-06-21 11:31:05

No idea what this could be, but we can atleast try to narrow down possible causes .

Next time this happens :

switch from gdm to text console and login as root .

run

# SYSTEMD_LESS=FRXMK journalctl |& curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io 
# dmesg -T |& curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io

each of those commands will output a link, post them .

switch to another text console and try to login as your user, report any messages you see on screen.

thabulos · 2021-06-21 21:04:28

Hi Lone_Wolf,

Thanks so much for offering to help me out here.

I switched to tty2 and logged in as root and ran your commands and generated the following two links:
http://ix.io/3qGN
http://ix.io/3qGO

I then switched to tty3 and tried to login as my username which is actually dthabet and I kept getting "Login incorrect". I double and triple checked my password to ensure it was correct.

Let me know if I did something wrong or if you need further info.

Lone_Wolf · 2021-06-22 13:08:21

fangfrish (part of clamav) has problems connecting, which looks network related .

You appear to be using networkmanager / wpa supplicant but there are also references to systemd-networkd and systemd-timesyncd .
Is that intentional ?

I see no references to ssd / hdd or filesystem errors.
gdm / gnome add to the journal log but don't appear to have problems (apart from plymouth ).

There are messages wrt pam authentication failures, but I can't see what's causing them.

Have you made changes to /etc/pam.d files ?
Are there .pacnew files you haven't looked at ?

If that doesn't give further clues, we need to make log files smaller : let's take gdm / plymouth / gnome / X out of the equation .

append systemd.unit=multi-user.target to the boot command line .
reboot and you will not see gdm but just a text console .

login as root & exit
login as user & exit
login as root and rerun the first of those 2 commands.

thabulos · 2021-06-27 01:06:10

Hi Lone_Wolf,

Sorry for the delayed reply. You gave me a lot of homework! You fixed it though after so many months of me recreating my user account at every login! I can't thank you enough. Unfortunately I don't know what fixed it exactly, but I'll share all the steps I completed below.

fangfrish (part of clamav) has problems connecting, which looks network related .

I couldn't figure out how to resolve this, but I uninstalled it and installed clamav-unofficial-sigs instead as per the Arch Wiki including and also enabled the malware patrol on it. All working now!

You appear to be using networkmanager / wpa supplicant but there are also references to systemd-networkd and systemd-timesyncd .
Is that intentional ?

No that was not intentional. I did not mean to be running two network daemons, so thanks for catching that. At first I uninstalled networkmanager and kept systemd-networkd and systemd-timesyncd but that didn't seem to play well with Gnome Desktop and my wifi, so I installed networkmanager again and disabled systemd-networkd/systemd-timesyncd. I'm assuming because you mentioned systemd-timesyncd, that nteworkmanager does it as well.

I see no references to ssd / hdd or filesystem errors.
gdm / gnome add to the journal log but don't appear to have problems (apart from plymouth ).

Thanks, I didn't realize there was that KillMode=none warning in my journal from plymouth. After an hour of troubleshooting, the solution was to uninstall plymouth and install plymouth-git.

There are messages wrt pam authentication failures, but I can't see what's causing them.
Have you made changes to /etc/pam.d files ?

I didn't make any changes /etc/pam.d files from my recollection but I could be wrong. I also am not sure exactly which pam authentication failures I need to look at. I decided to tackle on the next set of items which I thin is actually what resolved my issues, but if you think I need to return to this I will.

Are there .pacnew files you haven't looked at ?

I think this is the comment that fixed everything. To be honest, whenever I installed new packages and saw that a .pacnew file was created, I wouldn't pay attention to it because as an Arch Linux newbie I just didn't realize the importance of those warnings. It took me a few hours to come up with an approach, but this is what I did: 1) I installed the mlocate package and generated an index database, when I searched for pacnew I found about a dozen files 2) I then installed pacman-contrib package and ran the pacdiff command as per the Arch Wiki and then just overwrote all my conf files with the latest ones. This ended up breaking a few of my configs for mkinitcpio, sudoers, plymouth and pacman but I reconfigured successfully.

I rebooted my laptop about 20 times after all this and my username persisted at the gdm login screen! I haven't seen that in months so I think my problem is now resolved and will mark this thread as resolved.

If you would like me to check anything else though, please let me know.

Lone_Wolf · 2021-06-27 10:39:02

It was probably the pacnew files that made the difference, glad you figured it out.

thabulos wrote:

I'm assuming because you mentioned systemd-timesyncd, that networkmanager does it as well.

It's more complicated then that.
systemd-timesyncd has several weak points and is designed to work with systemd-networkd.
Combining it with other network management tools is near impossible.

NetworkManager is the only tool I know that CAN use systemd-timesyncd succesfully with additonal configuration[1]

Other time synchronization methods don't have that problem, are better at keeping the clocks synced and work with all network management tools[2]

I suggest you check https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_time and select a time sync method you prefer.
(My personal preference is ntp for desktops and chrony for laptops ) .

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System … d_via_DHCP

[2] I am inclined to add "EXCEPT systemd-networkd" as I've never heard of someone who succesfully used any non-systemd time sync method with systemd-networkd.
There is a small chance I'm wrong though.

Arch Linux

#1 2021-06-20 15:37:22

[SOLVED] User profile usually disappears after system boot

#2 2021-06-21 11:31:05

Re: [SOLVED] User profile usually disappears after system boot

#3 2021-06-21 21:04:28

Re: [SOLVED] User profile usually disappears after system boot

#4 2021-06-22 13:08:21

Re: [SOLVED] User profile usually disappears after system boot

#5 2021-06-27 01:06:10

Re: [SOLVED] User profile usually disappears after system boot

#6 2021-06-27 10:39:02

Re: [SOLVED] User profile usually disappears after system boot

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