# New install -weird login issues



## Gustaaf (May 1, 2019)

Hello. I'm completely new to FreeBsd. 
Please bear with me if my questions or comments seem dumb or ignorant.

I just installed FreeBsd 12.
During installation I gave root a password, and created user01 with password01.

I then installed Xorg, and finally Gnome3.

When I first booted into Gnome, something weird happened.
I was presented with a login screen, but the suggested user was not user01, but password01.

I tried to login with password01, which failed.
I tried to login with username01 as password, which failed.

I then succesfully logged in as root, with the password I created during installation.
In Gnome's graphical account manager, I changed user=password01 to user=user01.
I then tried to change the password to password01, but this failed.

After some more minutes of trial and error, the system rebooted.

I went into console, and reset the password of user01 to the original password01.
This had no effect on the Gnome login screen.
As user01 with password01, I still was denied entrance.

I tried chown-ing the home directory and tmp.
I entirely removed user01, and recreated user01 with a different password. 
I re-installed gdm.

No luck.
Gnome simply doesn't allow me to login as user01/password01.
On the other hand, user01/password01 can login to console without issues.

I finally removed user01, and created a completely different second user.
This second user can login to Gnome without problems.
However, every now and again the system keeps rebooting.

This probably has to do with gdm, and the way logins are managed, but I have no idea how repair that.

If anyone has some suggestions, I would be glad with any help.


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## SirDice (May 2, 2019)

Gustaaf said:


> I was presented with a login screen, but the suggested user was not user01, but password01.


Then you probably made an error with creating the user. A password is stored as a hash, so there's no easy way to get back to the password from that hash (a hash is a cryptographic one-way function). It's therefor impossible you're _seeing_ the original, plain text, password. So I'm guessing you accidentally entered the password in the GECOS or username field instead of the password field. And left the _real_ password field empty or maybe entered the name there.


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## Gustaaf (May 2, 2019)

Of course, that's quite possible.
But how to repair this ?

The thing is, user01/password01 is denied entrance by gdm/Gnome, but can log into console without any issues at all.
And when in console I remove user01, and then recreate user01, even with a different password, I'm still denied entrance by gdm/gnome.


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## Vull (May 2, 2019)

Since your system is new anyway, I would probably try reinstalling from scratch at this point. It goes very quickly. Before doing that, though, check out these links if you haven't already done so:









						Chapter 5. The X Window System
					

This chapter describes how to install and configure Xorg on FreeBSD, which provides the open source X Window System used to provide a graphical environment




					www.freebsd.org
				












						The FreeBSD GNOME Project
					

FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms.




					www.freebsd.org
				






			FreeBSD GNOME Project: GNOME 2.32 FAQ


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## Gustaaf (May 2, 2019)

Yes, I might reinstall, you're quite right.
But even if the actual install is relatively quick, I did both Xorg and Gnome3 by make install clean, which took considerably longer.
And anyhow, I'm intrigued by this, and I want to find out how I can fix it.

As user01 can login to console without issues, I guess user/password management within the system is fine.
This makes me think user/password management within gdm is somehow corrupted.

I understand gdm uses PAM for authentication, but for the moment, I haven't got much further.


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## k.jacker (May 2, 2019)

I've never used gdm, but since you logged in as root once, there's a chance that
some of Xorg's or gdm's files in your home directory have been overwritten and are now owned by by root.
According to the gdm documentation there should be a ~/.cache/gdm/session.log that should normally be woverwritten every time you log in. Maybe the problem lies there...
I'd try someting like `find -x ~ -user root` 

Though just a wild guess.


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## Vull (May 2, 2019)

Might want to check out topic 23 in the FAQ linked above for configuring PAM for auto-login and see if that works.


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## Sevendogsbsd (May 2, 2019)

Gustaaf said:


> Yes, I might reinstall, you're quite right.
> But even if the actual install is relatively quick, I did both Xorg and Gnome3 by make install clean, which took considerably longer.
> And anyhow, I'm intrigued by this, and I want to find out how I can fix it.
> 
> ...



Since you are a new user, I would suggest using the package (pkg) system and not "make install clean", which is the ports system. Packages are pre-compiled binaries and the install is very fast (relatively). After you become more familiar with FreeBSD, you can switch to the ports system, but unless you are customizing ports with specific options, it's not necessary.
My .02.


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## Gustaaf (May 2, 2019)

You're absolutely right. 
It's just, I like to do things simply because they can be done. 
And it was kind of appealing to build a system from source on my old Mac.
Anyhow, I quickly realised that my knowledge is far too limited to use the ports system.
Half of the options I didn't recognise, and the other half I had only a vague idea about.
Anyhow, I started it, and I finished it.

Now, today I ran pwd_mkdb /etc/master.passwd.
In this way, I'm absolutely sure the password db on the system side is okay.

It didn't change a thing Gnome-wise though.
User01 is still denied entrance, and the system keeps rebooting every now and then.
Which means I'll have to study gdm and gnome3 in more detail. 

@Vuli
Thanks for your suggestion, but I'm not really interested in auto-login.
I want the default login, which asks for a password.


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## Gustaaf (May 3, 2019)

Okay. I've enabled debug information from gdm.
This tells me, among other things:
/usr/local/etc/gdm/home/.config/gnome-sessions/sessions/gnome-login.session => non-existing or invalid file.

I had a look in /home/user01.
For one thing, .cache is missing.
If I compare with the home directory of user02, it seems more items are missing.

So I tried once again to remove and recreate user01.
With the same results as before: home/user01 seems to lack items, in particular .cache, and user01 is denied entrance in gnome.


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## Gustaaf (May 7, 2019)

Well, I studied pam extensively, and hopefully I learned a lot, but the truth is, there's nothing wrong with pam at all.
In the end, it's quite simple. 
My system uses a French keymap - fr(mac), and users have language set as follows: nl-BE.UTF-8.

On the other hand, Gnome's AuthenticationAgent uses en-US.UTF-8.
And of course, Gnome's AuthenticationAgent simply misreads my passwords.

Now, how can I tell Gnome to use (1) the French keymap (2) nl-BE.UTF-8.

Please, give me a hand here.


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## Gustaaf (May 26, 2019)

Can't be done.
It's a bug in gdm.




__





						235009 – [patch] x11/gnome-shell: allow configuring gdm keyboard layout
					






					bugs.freebsd.org


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## Sevendogsbsd (May 26, 2019)

Glad you solved your own issue - too bad the gnome devs haven't fixed this, or even let this happen in the first place.


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