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I'm not 100% sure but I think I ran setfacl with the wrong argument and changed acl stuff for everything under(non recursively?) '/' instead of './' , immediately half the applications I had running crashed and after a restart I can't login.

When I try to login the following flashes for a split second and then it goes back to the login screen, when I try to login from terminal it's the same thing but without the error message.

enter image description here

I don't know much about acl or what to do, I tried restoring from a backup with timeshift (I set it to backup everything) but it didn't effect the problem.

the command might have been:

sudo setfacl -m u:username:r

or

sudo setfacl -m u:username:r /

but I'm not sure.

ChanganAuto
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  • Please update your question with the exact command(s) that you run to create this problem. – Soren A Dec 11 '21 at 16:26
  • @SorenA i'm not 100% but i think it might have been sudo setfacl -m u:username:r / –  Dec 11 '21 at 16:31
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    Without knowing the exact command it's impossible to determine what's going on, but it's very likely you broke your installation, the only way to fix that is from a LIveUSB/installer image and undo that change, or reinstall. – Thomas Ward Dec 11 '21 at 16:37

1 Answers1

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Turns out all I had to do was remove the acl entry for my uid on the root directory with:

setfacl -x user:<username> <base directory>

After doing this from another OS I was able to boot and login no problem.

Apparently it's good habit to never type ./ for the current dir because . is perfectly valid and reduces these types of mistakes.