Public bug reported: On May 8. 2018 I was prompted to upgrade from 17.10 to 18.04.
The upgrade went smooth except that the installer asked me if it could make changes to /etc/login.defs. I thought it was supposed to not ask questions (and stall the upgrade if I was away from the computer), but I pressed yes and it continued. I pressed yes since I had not personally modified this file as far as I can remember and was not particularly attached to its contents. After reboot gnome-initial-setup wants me to create a new user. There is no (obvious) way to login with my old user, but Ctrl+Alt+F2 luckily worked---I could log in and all my files where still there. I tried changing UID_MIN in /etc/login.defs back to 500 from 1000 (I believe this was the change I was prompted about), but I still could not login graphically, so the /etc/login.defs change may have been unconnected to the bug. I was able to figure out that the offending program was called gnome- initial-setup and an "apt purge gnome-initial-setup" later I could log in as normal. I do not believe an average user could have figured this out (how many even know about the virtual terminals Ctrl+Alt+FX?). ** Affects: gnome-initial-setup (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1770233 Title: gnome-initial-setup prevents me from logging in with my existing user (UID 501) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-initial-setup/+bug/1770233/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs