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:
- The username had been successfully changed.
- 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...)
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.
I tried to run through step #4, but...
With the information available, (and after enabling show hidden files,) I could only assume that I should use
/home/.ecryptfs/[olduser's_originalusername]/.Private
Which is the directory the .Private "Link to Folder" file in /home/[newuser]/oldhome-backup/[olduser's_newusername] ("/home/newuser/oldhome-backup/olduser" above) links to. Thus my command would be:
sudo mount -t ecryptfs /home/.ecryptfs/[olduser's_originalusername]/.Private
Running said command however only results in the console returning
mount: /home/.ecryptfs/[olduser's_originalusername]/.Private: can't find in /etc/fstab.
[key]: (blue: old user's original username. red: old user's new username. magenta: new user's username.)
You need to add a location to mount it to as the last argument. Same command, but add a location at the end like
/mnt
, or another empty directory you can mount into.Yeah, I see the "/media/" bit on the end now - idk why I didn't clock that as something significant, I'll try again with a specified mount point. Thanks for clarifying! (and also thanks @Wolf_Munroe for pointing it out earlier)
👍
I ran the command again, this time specifying an empty directory to mount to, but what do I do here?
I'd assume to select option 1, but this dialogue doesn't seem to appear in the "HOWTO: Recover files from encrypted ecryptfs home directory" guide, so I just wanted to check.
Needs to be an existing directory
I know, I created the folder "oldhome-mountpoint" in "/home/newuser/oldhome-backup", then copied the path to that and used it as the specified mount point in the command, or at least I thought I did. I'll double check it again
I double checked
It seems to exist, and when copying the path it also seems to match the one used in the command.
@DuckyLoco404 @just_another_person
Not familiar with ecryptfs but that mount command looks incomplete.
General syntax for mount is:
sudo mount -t <filesystem type> <device or file to be mounted> <directory to mount device or file>
(The -t specifies the following value is a filesystem type.)
The path you've specified is the device or file to be mounted, but no mount point is specified.
Also saw this on Linux Mint forum:
(Recovering files from Encrypted ~.)
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=354385