RANT: installing fedora is now a real punishment!

[François Patte]

I wanted to install fedora 25 after my defeat to have an encrypted raid
install with fedora24 (system cannot shutdown and I filed a bug report
with all possible log files as explain in systemd, but up to now nobody
cares...)

Install of f25 was (almost) easy *but* I am unable to login! I created a
user with a password but when I want to login system claims that the
password is incorrect. OK maybe I made a mistake, so I try to login as
root from the console : password is incorrect too!

I try to rescue the system: it takes ages to accept the passphrase for
encrypted /home (why does the recue need to mount /home?????) After
that, I am unable to set a new root password: if I ask "chpasswd" the
answer is: "missing new password on line 1"  (of course I can see my new
password... but "missing new password..."

If I ask passwd, I have 1 second to type the password before falling
back to prompt... So I can't type anything!

WHAT A MESS!

[Corey W Sheldon]

On 01.02.2017 13:34, François Patte wrote:
> I wanted to install fedora 25 after my defeat to have an encrypted raid
> install with fedora24 (system cannot shutdown and I filed a bug report
> with all possible log files as explain in systemd, but up to now nobody
> cares...)
>
> Install of f25 was (almost) easy *but* I am unable to login! I created a
> user with a password but when I want to login system claims that the
> password is incorrect. OK maybe I made a mistake, so I try to login as
> root from the console : password is incorrect too!
>
> I try to rescue the system: it takes ages to accept the passphrase for
> encrypted /home (why does the recue need to mount /home?????) After
> that, I am unable to set a new root password: if I ask "chpasswd" the
> answer is: "missing new password on line 1" (of course I can see my new
> password... but "missing new password..."
>
> If I ask passwd, I have 1 second to type the password before falling
> back to prompt... So I can't type anything!
>
> WHAT A MESS!
>
> -- 
> François Patte
> UFR de mathématiques et informatique
> Laboratoire CNRS MAP5, UMR 8145
> Université Paris Descartes
> 45, rue des Saints Pères
> F-75270 Paris Cedex 06
> Tél. [phone]
> http://www.math-info.univ-paris5.fr/~patte [1]
>
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]

Firstly, its NOT chpasswd but root@localhost # password and / or
root@localhost # passwd {USERNAME}

Secondly, /home has possible USER SPECIFIC pam.d/ sshd/ gnupg/ and other
assorted configs that can be VERY relevant for a rescue system.

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Feb 01, 2017 at 02:34:32PM +0100, François Patte wrote:
> Install of f25 was (almost) easy *but* I am unable to login! I created a
> user with a password but when I want to login system claims that the
> password is incorrect. OK maybe I made a mistake, so I try to login as
> root from the console : password is incorrect too!

Is it possible that there's a problem with the keyboard configuration
(either now or during the install)?
> If I ask passwd, I have 1 second to type the password before falling
> back to prompt... So I can't type anything!

This is... odd. Can you describe in more detail what you are doing
here?

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 02/01/2017 02:34 PM, François Patte wrote:
> Install of f25 was (almost) easy *but* I am unable to login! I created a
> user with a password but when I want to login system claims that the
> password is incorrect. OK maybe I made a mistake, so I try to login as
> root from the console : password is incorrect too!

I've seen this happening, when permissions and/or ownership of 
ssh-related directories were too open or incorrect[1].

To remedy this, try to boot from another medium (dvd/usb), mount your / 
(and /home) and check permissions/ownership of /etc/ssh/* and 
/home/<users>/.ssh.

What I also experienced, was being unable to initially log-in with 
SELinux enabled, seemingly because SELinux was broken after upgrades.
There, I first had to boot with SELinux disabled (Adding selinux=0 to 
the grub-prompt) to get into the machine, issue a "touch /.autorelabel" 
and reboot.

Ralf

[1] Seems to me as if previous Fedora versions allowed to set them to 
what ssh nowadays considers "too open" and upgrades carried these over.

[kevin martin]

You could also try        echo "password" | passwd root --stdin to get the
root password changed to something you like.

---

Regards,

Kevin Martin

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 8:36 AM, Ralf Corsepius  wrote:
> On 02/01/2017 02:34 PM, François Patte wrote:
>
> Install of f25 was (almost) easy *but* I am unable to login! I created a
> > user with a password but when I want to login system claims that the
> > password is incorrect. OK maybe I made a mistake, so I try to login as
> > root from the console : password is incorrect too!
>
> I've seen this happening, when permissions and/or ownership of ssh-related
> directories were too open or incorrect[1].
>
> To remedy this, try to boot from another medium (dvd/usb), mount your /
> (and /home) and check permissions/ownership of /etc/ssh/* and
> /home/<users>/.ssh.
>
> What I also experienced, was being unable to initially log-in with SELinux
> enabled, seemingly because SELinux was broken after upgrades.
> There, I first had to boot with SELinux disabled (Adding selinux=0 to the
> grub-prompt) to get into the machine, issue a "touch /.autorelabel" and
> reboot.
>
> Ralf
>
> [1] Seems to me as if previous Fedora versions allowed to set them to what
> ssh nowadays considers "too open" and upgrades carried these over.
>
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]

[William Oliver]

On Wed, 2017-02-01 at 14:34 +0100, François Patte wrote:
> [snip]
> If I ask passwd, I have 1 second to type the password before falling
> back to prompt... So I can't type anything!
>
> WHAT A MESS!

Well, here's what Fedora says to do:

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/23/html/System_Administrato
rs_Guide/sec-Changing_and_Resetting_the_Root_Password.html

Sometimes these guidelines are a bit outdated, but it's a starting
point, I guess.

Personally, when I do an install, I do it in stages.  I'll do a minimal
installation, and then install all my software, environments, etc.
later.

That way, if something in the basic install screws up, I can do a
reinstall more quickly -- in 15-30 mins or so.  I used to try to
install everything at the beginning, but ended up with having to repeat
hour to 2 hour long installs.

As an aside, my experience has been the opposite of yours.  I did an
upgrade that went well.  About a week later, my dog knocked my laptop
off the table, which caused physical damage to the hard drive.  My box
wouldn't boot -- many system files were damaged.

So, I downloaded a small live version, and booted up.  I was able to
backup most of my home directory, and then did and fsck -c on the
encrypted drive.  About 2500 blocks were damaged, but it managed to
rewrite the bad block inode.

Then I installed fedora 25 from a live distro -- and it came up great. 
It took about 20 mins to install (and then an hour and a half to
install all the software and such).

billo