# Cannot login



## walterbyrd (Dec 20, 2016)

I am running 10.3  amd64 with ZFS file system. I have encrypted the disk. 

This is a home server, I have never had this problem before. I have had the same login since I originally installed. 

Before 10.3 I was running 10.2. I have been using this installation for months. 

I have tried logging in as root, have also tried logging in as other users, nothing works. 

I would be happy to just retrieve my data, then I will re-install.


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## walterbyrd (Dec 20, 2016)

I was able to login, as root, after about 30 tries. 

I changed my password, and was able to login to my user account. But something is wrong.


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## SirDice (Dec 20, 2016)

walterbyrd said:


> I am running 10.3  amd64 with ZFS file system. I have encrypted the disk. This is a home server, I have never had this problem before. I have had the same login since I originally installed. Before 10.3 I was running 10.2. I have been using this installation for months. I have tried logging in as root, have also tried logging in as other users, nothing works.
> 
> I would be happy to just retrieve my data, then I will re-install.


That really depends on where you're not able to login. If you cannot pass the encryption password you're screwed. If you're able to unlock the encryption but not able to login I'm guessing you've made an error while updating and it nuked your user accounts. Try logging in (locally) using root without a password.


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## walterbyrd (Dec 20, 2016)

I should have mentioned, I was able to unlock the encryption. 

I have always used the same password for the encryption as my user password. For some reason, unlocking the encryption was never a problem. I tried rebooting a few times,  the same thing happened every time. 

When I was able to login, I did no locally, as root, but I used the root password.

I have done some updates recently, but not since yesterday.

Are there any steps I should take, now that I have the system running?


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## SirDice (Dec 20, 2016)

How did you update the system? If you used the source to update did you run mergemaster(8)? Sometimes it needs to mutate the user database, and if you're not careful merging the changes you can end up removing the existing user accounts.


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## walterbyrd (Jan 2, 2017)

I managed to get it working. But I cannot understand why.

I just kept rebooting, logging in as root, then changing my user password. After about three tries, it seemed to work.


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