login not working (login loop)

[Christoph Ziehr]

I upgraded Ubuntu Mate from version 17.10 to 18.04 by formatting the partition and re-installing with an USB-stick. But after rebooting, I was not able to login to the fresh installed system; after typing the password an hitting enter, the screen became black and after a short time, the login screen was displayed again.

When changing to a login shell with CTRL + ALT + F1, it was possible to login and do an apt-get upgrade, but I had no access to my home-partition, because I encrypted my home-folder with ecryptfs several years ago.

On the internet, the hints pointed to problems with the graphic card or the xorg-sessions. Other issues could appear, if the home-partition is used from an earlier installation. I thought that this would be the reason in my case, because I use my home-partition for about 10 years now.

The solution:
I figured out, that in Ubuntu Mate 18.04 the package ecryptfs is missing in the default installation. In earlier Versions, I'm sure ecryptfs was integrated in the standard installation. Because of this, the home-folder couldn't be opened, and so the login fails.

The solution is to login in a shell (press CTRL + ALT + F1) and do a

sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Ubuntu MATE because there has been no activity for 60 days.]