Unable to login

[Jerry]

On Mon, 11 Nov 2019 15:46:39 +0000, Matthew Seaman commented:
>On 11/11/2019 14:38, Jerry wrote:
>> I recently updated to FreeBSD 12.1. Everything seemed fine at first.
>> Now, quite suddenly, I am unable to login to my system.
>> 
>>  From a cold boot, the login screen appears. I type in the name and
>> password, and a new login screen appears, The time of my last login
>> is updated though. It appears that I am being immediately signed out
>> of each session. I am caught in a login cycle.
>> 
>> What can I do to correct this?
>>   
>
>Here's an outline of the sorts of things you can try to get access to
>an uncommunicative system.  Try these in this order until you succeed
>in logging in.  You almost certainly won't need to try the later
>stages in this sequence, as those indicate a machine so badly broken
>that it would struggle to boot at all, let alone get to a login
>screen.  But I've left them in here for completeness' sake.
>
>Are you using a graphical login manager?  Can you login on the console 
>without the graphical bits?  You can usually use Crt-Alt-F2 to switch
>to vty2 which should give you a console login prompt.
>
>Failing that, can you login remotely via the network at all?
>
>     --- if you can login outside your graphical environment, then the
>         breakage is in the graphical layer.  Check the logs for clues;
>         try reinstalling various graphical bits.  Make sure you have
> any necessary loadable kernel modules loaded: remember that these
>         are specific to the exact kernel version you're running, so
>         loadable modules may well need recompiling locally after an
>         upgrade.
>
>         Be sure to check for things like disk full (df -h) or run-out-
>         of-inodes (df -i)
>
>Can you login on the console as a different user?  As root would be
>useful.
>
>     --- being able to login as a different user indicates that it's
>         probably something like your user shell that's broken.
> Missing shared libraries is a classic reason for things like that to
>         happen.
>
>Failing that, can you reboot the machine into single user mode and get 
>into the console that way? (Take the default when it asks you what
>shell to use)
>
>     --- this gives you a somewhat limited root shell, without
> networking or any of the other usual services running.  Also the
> filesystem will be mounted read-only (if you're on UFS2) or only the
> root ZFS will be mounted, so you may need to remount it read-write
>         and also mount all of the other filesystems.  Again, go
> hunting in system logs for any indication of why your login is
> failing.
>
>         If that doesn't work, try again, but this time, when prompted
> to type in the name of the shell, type in /rescue/sh  If you get
>         this far then your system is pretty badly hosed and you should
>         be thinking about reinstalling, but you still have a chance to
>         recover stuff from your drive before you overwrite it.
>
>The final level to try is booting into a live-CD from some
>installation media.  You should then be able to mount your actual
>filesystems onto the live-CD and do the sort of investigations
>described above.
>
>	Cheers,
>
>	Matthew

Thanks Matthew. I am keeping this for future reference.

I was doing some cleanup on my system after the update. I decided to
remove a lot of crud from various files, including the ".bashrc" file.
For some dumb reason, I stuck an "exit" at the end of the file after I
had cleared out a lot of obsolete settings. I hadn't had my third cup
of coffee yet, I suppose. I was able to access the machine from my
Windows 10 PC and correct the problem.

-- 
Jerry