Arch Linux

thearcherblog

Member

Registered: 2014-10-30

Posts: 165

[SOLVED BY REINSTALLING] Errors after restore backup with rsync (NTFS)

Good morning,

I'm my learning path I destroyed my arch Linux installation yesterday and I restore the backup I made with rsync.

Everything looks OK but unfortunately I cannot login with root or my password.

I checked Google and some people said that with the arch CD and deleting the shadow file and recreate it with the pwconv command, with arch-chroot first.

Yes, it generates the new shadow file. I changed the password with passwd command for root and my user without any problem but, after restarting, cannot login.

Please, can someone bring me some light in this?

Excuse typos please, I'm writing from a mobile.

Regards,

Thearcher

Update 1:

Still struggling here..

if I boot with the CD, mount the partitions, arch-chroot /mnt and:

su myuser
passwd

Accept my old password but it's not able to save the new one due to the following error:

Changing password for myuser.
(current) UNIX password:
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: Authentication token lock busy
passwd: password unchanged

Partition is mounted with rw permissions.

If I try to change the password from root (passwd myuser) works fine but still not able to login with it.

Any suggestion?

Thanks smile

Update 2:

Ok, I think I understand why it's happening all of this... the question its... it's a way to solve it?

The thing is that I made the backup in a NTFS partition... that means that permissions where not saved properly (because of the NTFS permissions attributes).

My question now is... there is a way to restore all the permissions in the whole file system?

Please, some help is really appreciated.

Update 3:

That seems to help a bit at least:

for i in `pacman -Q | cut -f1 -d " "` ; do pacman -S --noconfirm "$i" ; done

Now I'm able to change the password using the normal commands but after reboot... still not working...

As I'm logged remotely... I cannot login again to my computer... until this night.

I will keep this updated.

Last edited by thearcherblog (2014-11-07 13:42:15)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,917

Re: [SOLVED BY REINSTALLING] Errors after restore backup with rsync (NTFS)

I fear the permissions problem is going to cause you nothing but trouble.   My best suggestion is to chroot into your environment and reinstall all of your packages again.

One way to do this is something along the lines of pacman -S $(pacman -Qsq)
The only drawback to this is that it will install everything as explicit and may break future removal of some packages that were installed as a dependency.   Maybe someone with more pacman fu can suggest something more robust.

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MoonSwan

Member

From: Great White North

Registered: 2008-01-23

Posts: 881

Re: [SOLVED BY REINSTALLING] Errors after restore backup with rsync (NTFS)

Following ewaller's logic wouldn't you then be able to mark all of you newly-installed apps as "explicitly installed" using a "pacman -Ds --asexplicit" command?

thearcherblog

Member

Registered: 2014-10-30

Posts: 165

Re: [SOLVED BY REINSTALLING] Errors after restore backup with rsync (NTFS)

Unfortunately I tried yesterday and have too many problems. I think the directories and files does not have the proper permissions so, even if I reinstall all the package, almost all the files system will not have be fine...

I learned the lesson... Never make a backup using rsync from Linux filesystem to an NTFS one.

We can close this thread I think unless someone has a better solution for the next time.

I will reinstall my computer XD

Thanks a lot for your advice.

Regards,

TheArcher

Last edited by thearcherblog (2014-11-07 08:23:06)