LMDE UP6 RC i386 - Can not log in with password after install

[Luke Seubert]

After a fresh install of LMDE UP6 RC 32 bit, upon booting up, my password is rejected and I can not log in at the graphical login.

I am extremely sure that I am not mistyping the password - it is one I have used for a long time and thus the key sequence is very familiar to me. Repeated tries result in no login. I did a complete re-install, and had the same problem.

I switched to TTY1 via Ctrl_Alt-F1 and attempted to log in via the console. When logging in as a user, the same problem occurred. When I logged in as "root", I was taken immediately to a root console with no need for any password.

I used the passwd user command to key in the same password. After rebooting, I was able to log in normally, both via graphical login and console login.

Because I was able to log in as root without having to type in any password, I am flagging this as a security vulnerability. A freshly installed OS should never allow root logins without a password.

[Luke Seubert (lukeseubert)]

LMDE-UP6-Mate-i386-dev-20130304-1839

After installing the above development release, the problem got worse.

Not only can I not log in as a regular user, neither through the graphical login screen nor at one of the tty console screens; but I can't log in as root to change the user password.

Using the above release, I now have a system which I can not log into either as root or as a regular user, and which I can not repair to make functional without firing up a rescue CD.

[Cameron (camthemusician)]

Also affects Linux Mint 15 Xfce 64-bit. After typing in the correct user name and password, the desktop starts to load, but jumps back to the login screen. Tried restarting X, logging into a tty and starting X, but the issue still persists. I installed Mint 13 Cinnamon, which has a different login screen, and it worked fine.