Mageia forum

Hi,

I just installed Mageia 4, clean install over Mageia 3, using existing
partitions (including Windows 7 partition) 32 bit KDE from a Live DVD.

It went okay, but the installation hung at the creation of login passwords
stage. I put in a root password and then set a user - but when I put in this
password the process stopped completely, and I had no choice but to do a hard
shutdown.

When I switched the computer back on, the creation of log-ins process seemed to
continue. Again, I set the root password, but when I repeated the user password
a box popped up telling me that the user was already in the system.

I thought that I should put in a second user so that I could complete the
process.

I intended to then delete the second user immediately in MCC; however, for some
reason it is now registered as the Group owner, with the first user being part
of that group.

Now when the computer boots the second (group) user name pops up with a
message that an error has occurred and that I should seek administrator
help. Unfortunately I'm the administrator and I don't know what to do.

MCC tells me I can't delete the unwanted group without deleting the user. If I
delete both group and user, will this affect the home partition? Obviously, I
don't want this to be touched.

Otherwise, what could I do to recreate the log-in options with just a single
user?

Apart from this glitch, the computer is running okay, so I would prefer not
to reinstall (I'm thinking the process might hang again in the same place). Is
there any way I can avoid this?

Thanks for any help.

In MCC; check the UID & GID of your already created users, then create a new user making sure that the new UID & GID are fresh and new. Afterwards you could login with the new user you have created and delete the other two problematic ones. Now you may rename the user as you wish.

Regarding your question about the /home partition; what exactly do you mean? Do you have data already for the two problematic users? If so; copy the data to the new user's home and change ownership accordingly..otherwise; if there's no data you can just delete the home directory for the deleted users..

Of course; you might want to drelete any other possibly related folders and directory like /var/spool/some_folder for instance, which might belong to any of the deleted users..

Hope this can give you an idea of the options you have..

If you're using an existing user on existing /home partition go ahead and reinstall.

This time on first boot when you create the user with the existing /home/folder be patient as it can take a long time for the system to check and adjust ownership and permissions on the data. I really mean a long time, I've seen it take over 20 minutes with a large amount of data.

linuxero, Ken Bergen,

Thanks for looking in.

linuxero, when I was googling for solutions, I saw that there were command line methods for deleting users and that it was necessary to delete them before deleting the groups which house them. Since in this case the user I wanted to keep was inside the group I wanted to delete I was a little bit paranoid about progressing without getting some advice. In the end I decided that tampering with settings in MCC was probably the most roundabout way of proceeding since I'd only just done the installation. I decided to take Ken-Bergen's advice instead. See below.

Ken-Bergen, I must have done updates on Linux systems a dozen times over the years and I don't remember the creation of users ever taking so long; however, you're absolutely right, it was just a question of waiting. I guess the time lag is because the home folder has grown ever larger (although I'm still not clear on why it takes so long). Anyway, I went ahead and reinstalled, this time patiently. The procedure eventually finished and the system now works as it did in my Mageia 3 days.

One observation I would make is that throughout the installation process I got messages telling me to wait or be patient, but when it got to the process which took the most time there was nothing. I'll have to try and remember this next time.

Thanks to both of you for looking in.

I guess I have to mark this query as solved despite the fact that the best (least troublesome) solution turned out to be a reinstallation of the system.