Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2019 12:57:29 -0500 From: Jerry <jerry@seibercom.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Unable to login Message-ID: <20191111125729.000034f4@seibercom.net> In-Reply-To: <cd757f5e-c477-d7a5-8fb7-0ff696cabc87@FreeBSD.org> References: <20191111093855.0000098e@seibercom.net> <cd757f5e-c477-d7a5-8fb7-0ff696cabc87@FreeBSD.org>
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On Mon, 11 Nov 2019 15:46:39 +0000, Matthew Seaman commented: >On 11/11/2019 14:38, Jerry wrote: >> I recently updated to FreeBSD 12.1. Everything seemed fine at first. >> Now, quite suddenly, I am unable to login to my system. >> >> From a cold boot, the login screen appears. I type in the name and >> password, and a new login screen appears, The time of my last login >> is updated though. It appears that I am being immediately signed out >> of each session. I am caught in a login cycle. >> >> What can I do to correct this? >> > >Here's an outline of the sorts of things you can try to get access to >an uncommunicative system. Try these in this order until you succeed >in logging in. You almost certainly won't need to try the later >stages in this sequence, as those indicate a machine so badly broken >that it would struggle to boot at all, let alone get to a login >screen. But I've left them in here for completeness' sake. > >Are you using a graphical login manager? Can you login on the console >without the graphical bits? You can usually use Crt-Alt-F2 to switch >to vty2 which should give you a console login prompt. > >Failing that, can you login remotely via the network at all? > > --- if you can login outside your graphical environment, then the > breakage is in the graphical layer. Check the logs for clues; > try reinstalling various graphical bits. Make sure you have > any necessary loadable kernel modules loaded: remember that these > are specific to the exact kernel version you're running, so > loadable modules may well need recompiling locally after an > upgrade. > > Be sure to check for things like disk full (df -h) or run-out- > of-inodes (df -i) > >Can you login on the console as a different user? As root would be >useful. > > --- being able to login as a different user indicates that it's > probably something like your user shell that's broken. > Missing shared libraries is a classic reason for things like that to > happen. > >Failing that, can you reboot the machine into single user mode and get >into the console that way? (Take the default when it asks you what >shell to use) > > --- this gives you a somewhat limited root shell, without > networking or any of the other usual services running. Also the > filesystem will be mounted read-only (if you're on UFS2) or only the > root ZFS will be mounted, so you may need to remount it read-write > and also mount all of the other filesystems. Again, go > hunting in system logs for any indication of why your login is > failing. > > If that doesn't work, try again, but this time, when prompted > to type in the name of the shell, type in /rescue/sh If you get > this far then your system is pretty badly hosed and you should > be thinking about reinstalling, but you still have a chance to > recover stuff from your drive before you overwrite it. > >The final level to try is booting into a live-CD from some >installation media. You should then be able to mount your actual >filesystems onto the live-CD and do the sort of investigations >described above. > > Cheers, > > Matthew Thanks Matthew. I am keeping this for future reference. I was doing some cleanup on my system after the update. I decided to remove a lot of crud from various files, including the ".bashrc" file. For some dumb reason, I stuck an "exit" at the end of the file after I had cleared out a lot of obsolete settings. I hadn't had my third cup of coffee yet, I suppose. I was able to access the machine from my Windows 10 PC and correct the problem. -- Jerry
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