i did update my machine with pacman -Syu. after rebooting, i cannot login. i con see this error Failed to start Virtual Console Setup a tiny second right before log in screen. i had to capture it in slow mo to able to read it. i attach the image below.

and on the login, after i enter my username and hit enter it just hangs for a while without asking the password and asks for username again. it acts like when you enter wrong password.

Fix

turns out /bin some how got messed up. thanks to @wwwgem, i looked into system logs (journalctl) and fixed it

  • Static_Rocket@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    7 months ago

    That warning comes up if you are using sd-vconsole but do not have systemd in the mkinitcpio hooks. You should fix that but it is most likely unrelated to the login issue.

    Login issues normally hint at either the user shell or pam configs being wrong but you can also get this behavior if (the users home directory is on a secondary disk && that disk failed to mount && you aren’t using systemd-homed).

    • t0mri@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      7 months ago

      sorry for late reply. yeah, my /bin got messed up somehow, thats why it couldnt find the essentials, more likely bash

      • Static_Rocket@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        Cool, saw your logs just a while ago with the error about being unable to execute /bin/sh so I figured as much. What did you do to get there? I’ve never had an update fumble that hard…

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      I’m my experience usually you get assigned a home dir of “/” and a warning message if your home directory can’t be found. But you can login.

      • sgibson5150@slrpnk.net
        1·
        7 months ago

        Not your fault. I was surprised at the behavior. Lemmy should handle that better. A post in the subscribed list IMO should be more like an abstract or excerpt, with the full text only available when viewing the post.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      And we’re only seeing votes and responses from people that didn’t say fuck it and abandon the thread! Is a link to pastebin or something really that much harder than dumping your entire lengthy log file here?

  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
    6·
    7 months ago

    agetty[349]: tty1: can’t exec /bin/login: No such file or directory

    Well there’s your problem.

    Login gets called to check if the username you put in is in the list of users and if it is it asks for a password (behavior subject to configuration). If you don’t have /bin/login you can’t login!

    Advice to fix arch is as follows: boot from usb, chroot to your environment and use the built in tools to fix it automatically.

      • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
        1·
        7 months ago

        No apology necessary, did you figure out what caused it or weather some binaries were missing or just had screwy permissions?

        E: just saw your update. Nice job!

      • ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social
        3·
        7 months ago

        Chroot sidesteps login entirely. When you use chroot you’re always root and you don’t need the password of the machine you’re chrooting into.

  • www-gem@lemmy.ml
    4·
    7 months ago

    To investigate the issue you may want to use a bootable drive and chroot into your system. This will allow you to see any error messages using the journactl command. Once you know what’s going on exactly you’ll be able to fix it or get a better assistance from people here or on the Arch forum.
    I know someone who encountered the exact same login behavior after this update. It appeared that some packages were broken and he had to reinstall them.

      • www-gem@lemmy.ml
        1·
        7 months ago

        Glad you’re back on tracks! Looks like this update messed up /bin for some people. I love when OPs like you take time to close their first post with the resolution. Thank you. If you have time to quickly summarize the details of the fix that may benefit others as well.

  • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
    1·
    7 months ago

    I’m curious about this because I had a bunch of dracut warnings when I updated my EndeavourOS to 6.8.7 the other day. Seeing this doesn’t make me too keen on rebooting until I’ve updated without error messages…

      • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        Oh, in the end I just pulled a $ sudo dracut --regenerate-all --force to generate a working initramfs. But did you find a solution to your problem? Glad you found a fix!