Login broken with systemd 256 and homed-managed home dir

[dmitrig]

Stopped being able to log in after upgrading to systemd 256. Running arch linux / xfce4 (xorg) and a systemd-homed managed home directory with default (luks) storage.

Successful auth prints:

Error writing X authority: Failed to open X authority /.Xauthority: Permission denied

and kicks me back to the password prompt.

Works fine with systemd 255 or a non-encrypted home directory. Did a bit of digging and it looks like after the upgrade org.freedesktop.Accounts started reporting my user's home dir as "/" while it's not activated. Tried user-authority-in-system-dir=true as a workaround, but login still fails trying to mkdir in root.

[curable-online]

I have the same problem with systemd 256.x and encrypted home directory. The only way to workaround and pass is to log in from another tty which will mounts and decrypts your home dir and then you can login throu lightdm.

[Chacha75]

I've experienced the same problem in Manjaro on 3 different PCs.
Login only worked if user was logged in on another tty as mentioned above.
My solutions were to switch to GDM, or to downgrade systemd to 255.x

[hmalzahn]

There is a simple workaround that works fine for me: while logged on as your-user, append the systemd-generated passwd-line to he system passwd database:

sudo getent passwd your-user >>/etc/passwd

I guess this might have side effects, but so far I have not seen any.

[curable-online]

@hmalzahn

Thanks for this. I will test it in my next boot.

I guess this might have side effects, but so far I have not seen any.

Definitely, but I don’t think if it introduces any security issues.

[hiaseilert]

I have the same problem. But home is btrfs-Subvolume (no encryption) btw.
systemd 256.x and 257.1
lightdm 1:1.32.0