this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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Linux Mint

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Hi fediverse,

I'm hoping someone can give me some advice on an issue that means I can't access the main user account on my Linux Mint (Cinnamon) operating system.

Context:

I'm using a dual boot setup of windows and mint on my laptop. I use mint (or used to, when I could access my user) for pretty much anything that doesn't require things* only my windows instance has. (*things such as support for video games that support windows but not linux, for example)

When creating my main user account, I made a mistake in the username. It was irritating enough for me to want to change it, and as doing so seemed like it should have been fine, I settled upon three guides and ended up (mostly?) just following this one:

https://www.linuxuprising.com/2019/04/how-to-change-username-on-ubuntu-debian.html

I cant remember all of what happened anymore, but I have the following screenshots, along with the stuff I do remember.

(note: red blocks represent the new username, blue blocks represent the old username)

At the used-by-process error, I first tried following the guide precisely, then hoped that "PID" was Process ID, and that the guide expected me to put the ID that usermod stated after "PID", and tried doing that.

Idk if that fvcked something up...

Then I guess I fixed that somehow, idk if I did so by restarting and logging in only as tempuser, or if I had already done that and fixed it some other way.

Anyway I meant to run each line of the command separately to avoid stuff going wrong, but accidentally did both at once. I hoped it'd be fine anyway.

Then stuff happened I guess.

Anyway,

I cant remember much more but I know that I tried to log back in as my main user account and I found out that:

  1. The username had been successfully changed.
  2. I could not log into my main user account.

Imputing the correct username and password was successful, and acted like it was logging me in as usual. Then after the usual black screen, it just throws me back to the login window.

This still happens.

I went through a fair bit of internet searching, followed some advice. All that most people were saying was to check how much disk space you have left - and to not keep timeshift snapshots on the same drive as your OS.

(this is one such post, and (I think) the only one I found that I definitely recognise from the previous searching: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/15revgg/cant_stay_logged_in_keeps_going_back_to_login/)

I did ctrl-alt-f1 and ran df -h, and deleted most of the timeshift snapshots I had (I think I had maybe 6 and deleted 4 or 5).

Here's the output of df -h that I think is from after I deleted the timeshifts:

Idk what to do, hope someone can advise.

(TL;DR: tried to change username on mint, now whenever I try to log in to the user it throws me back to the login window after the usual black screen. Hope this suffices for a summary...)

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[–] DuckyLoco404@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Thanks for responding! I was still able to login as tempuser last time i checked, so I assume I still can. I'll see if this works, this seems like a really straightforward fix

[–] Auth@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

How did you get on, did you get it resolved?

[–] DuckyLoco404@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

I'm kinda just running through @just_another_person's suggestion ([see:thread:https://lemmy.world/post/34365607/18768234]) and if that doesn't work I'll probably see if I can do anything with the ecryptfs-recover-private commands. ([see:thread:https://lemmy.world/post/34365607/18770862])

[–] DuckyLoco404@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

I tried logging in with tempuser and remembered that I have no idea how to access the files on my main user. In the file manager the home folder for said user isn’t accessible, and I assume that’s because I set it to be encrypted when setting it up. Thus I can’t access the files to copy them over to a new user or anything. Also, I assume I wouldn’t be able to rename the homedir as such, and don’t know where to start checking or changing user settings and permissions and such.