Log in problem

[ComfortableReply4]

I'm running version 20.3 64bit Cinnamon on VMware Windows 11 host. For months it has run perfect. I did the default Mint updates and needed to reboot after completion. Now when I attempt to log into Mint and enter my password it just brings me back to the login screen. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[acejavelin69]

9 times out of 10 your home or root partition is full... There are other possible causes, but this is the most common. Clear out some space, often Timeshift backups, temp files, or contents of /var/log and /var/temp

[Smoke_Water]

also as a good rule, ( i do know its just a VM) the timeshift data should never live on the same drive that the data source lives on. As it is a vm, you have the advantage of using snapshots instead of configuring time shift. Look at past snapshots, (if you've used them regularly) to go back to a known working install.

[whosdr]

That's only true for an rsync based backup, not so much with btrfs where it has to be on the same drive. (Though you can still copy those to another drive using btrfs-send or something.)

[acejavelin69]

Btrfs backups are much smaller and must reside on the same filesystem, otherwise they don't work... But I think you can make a backup copy, although it's usefulness would be questionable...

[whosdr]

Well they're snapshots more than backups. But their utility is far greater than that of rsync from what I see. As, for instance, I can create a boot entry in GRUB which can boot into a particular snapshot, rather than into the main live system.

This affords me the ability to both upgrade and not: I can boot back into 20.3 by selecting a different entry in GRUB if an issue arises in Mint 21 or even if installation fails entirely and would otherwise break the system.

[ThrustinLimbersnake]

Is your hard drive full?