After 1st shutdown, can't get past "Enter Auth Username"/"Enter Auth Password"

[Wannabe_Seasteader]

I did my first install yesterday on a ODROID C4 with the Focal/Xfce Desktop image running the 5.10.27 kernel

(Armbian_21.02.4_Odroidc4_focal_current_5.10.27_xfce_desktop.img).  I installed it on an eMMC card which I had tested

using f3read and f3write earlier (those tests worked).

 

I reset the root password and added a user with sudo privileges.   I also did an apt-get update/upgrade and installed openvpn

(the openVPN service that I use seemed to be working as with my laptops).  I didn't tinker much more and shut Armbian down.

I was very pleased with Armbian (and much preferred it to the stock Ubuntu Mate).  I was (and still am) looking to use Armbian

as my preferred OS for ARM boards (as well as looking at the BSDs).

 

Today, I booted the board up and saw the boot-up services giving their ok's (among them, initial connections to the VPN services).

Then it got to the "Enter Auth Username" and "Enter Auth Password" brick wall...

 

I saw another forum post that seemed to suggest entering "root" and the password "1234" followed by two iterations of using the new

root password.  However, no combination of "root" or the new username and the associated passwords (either 1234 or the new

root password) is working.  I've tested the couple special characters used in the password in the username field and they

seem to be transmitting ok.  I'm really stumped (and I'm probably going to have to resort to pulling the plug and resorting to the Mate

image to do work with my first ARM board for now -- which is extremely annoying).

 

A few other quibbles (from someone with some C/C++ and x86 and AMD64 assembly-language experience and who wants to

improve my skillset in C and ARM assembly-language):

• there should probably be better feedback from the password handshaking (i.e. if a password received by the OS was incorrect, most *nixes let you know).
• the timer for the prompt makes one wonder what is happening (what state the interface is in).  If left alone -- without typing anything -- the interface alternates between the username and password prompt.  It asks for the username, nothing happens (i.e., the "enter" key was never pressed), and a minute or so later it asks for the password of this blank user (and repeats this loop endlessly).  Other times when left alone it repeatedly asks for the Username or repeatedly for the Password (something's messed up).
• That last one is definitely a bug, so is when you enter "root" for the username and then it follows this up by asking for username instead of the password (sometimes five or six times).  This is kind of a nuance on the same sort of questionable state the authentication-handshaking is in.

 

For now, I'm putting the Armbian eMMC aside, gathering network information from the Ubuntu Mate eMMC and doing some experiments

with FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD.  I've been trying to expand my horizons from Ubuntu and Debian forks (Gentoo, Linux From Scratch,

FreeBSD, Manjaro, probably Arch and Illumos at some point) on my laptops but am really hopeful about exploring and doing further work

with Armbian; my first impression was very enthusiastic -- my second impression... it's buggy (at least if you ever

shut the system down).

[Heisath]

Is this on cli or desktop?  I am confused because I never saw Armbian printing out a prompt like "Enter Auth Username" and "Enter Auth Password". This makes me think, maybe you have some third party software, which is asking for some info there? (ex. the VPN).

 

Or is this some flavor of the image? You could start with a clean image on SD card, just boot it up once, and then (without installing / setting up any of your services), reboot it. Does it show the same prompt?

 

Also try to attach screenshot / serial log.

[Wannabe_Seasteader]

I'm using the Desktop (non-cli) image.

 

The first set of prompts is at the bottom of the image (just to show what was happening).  Without entering any input, the interface prompts for the password after about a minute of no input.  If I'd left it running longer I would have had a series of prompts (that would vary between asking for the username or the password -- not always in that order).  I took the screen shot and was going to enter my password and username for the VPN but pressed enter twice and it flushed through whatever the problem was.  I'm now at the desktop.  The bypass seems to be not trying to enter root, the username, or any password but simply pushing the carriage-return key a few times repeatedly with no other input made earlier.  It may very well be because the VPN service is being polled in the boot sequence (as shown in the screen shot) -- though it's not actually connecting until I run a shell script that's:

 

    $ sudo openvpn /etc/openvpn/<configuration file>

 

I haven't experimented enough with the USB to UART (haven't got the terminal recognized in my laptop at the moment -- I was trying to do this ).  I was getting some minimal dialog via minicom when I was trying to get FreeBSD to boot on the board (but I haven't figured out how to configure the BSD bootloader in u-boot yet -- just read something that involved getting the BSD-world pkgsrc configured on a Linux system).

 

[tparys]

Definitely not a Linux login prompt. I'm going to echo @Heisath and suggest it's probably an OpenVPN configuration thing.

 

I'd pop the SD card / eMMC out, chroot in via a Linux laptop, and run "systemctl disable openvpn" (or whatever that service is).

 

You can always start it after you boot up.

 

Or just reinstall and start over. But I'd be careful on what you're enabling on reboot, and ensure it's configured correctly before you do so.

 

(Edit) You can also enable the SystemD rescue shell by adding "systemd.debug-shell" to your kernel arguments, and using ctl-alt-f9 to drop to a rescue shell during a stuck boot. It'll give you a better idea of the offending application that's doing that to you. https://www.thegeekdiary.com/how-to-boot-into-rescue-mode-or-emergency-mode-through-systemd-in-centos-rhel-7-and-8/

[Heisath]

https://askubuntu.com/questions/627842/what-does-the-form-field-enter-auth-username-during-the-boot-proccess-mean

[Wannabe_Seasteader]

After getting past those prompts with no real input (just hitting enter a few times) - I'd thought perhaps that might be all that was required.

 

Additionally, at shutdown, there was a series of messages displayed about waiting for unexpected input (each message repeated the same line or three and referenced its own independent process-id) before it finalized shutdown.  Those messages are probably stored in a log somewhere in the filesystem.

 

However, I wasn't initially able to get past the prompts on turning on the system today (thirty enters later and it was still asking).  It is the openvpn service at bootup -- it only asked once for the Auth Username then stalled until I plugged the ethernet cable in.  So, I unplugged the board and I was preparing to reinstall when I noticed that I had write access to the eMMC via the USB-to-eMMC reader (I did a duckduckgo search for the "Enter Auth" phrases and "openvpn" and found the askubuntu link that Heisath posted).  In /etc/default/openvpn I removed the comment out so that

 

AUTOSTART="none"

 

is the behavior at boot.  This time there weren't those "Starting OpenVPN connection" messages shown in the screen shot nor the validation brick-wall questions.  I'm writing this message via the Armbian system and I'm able to turn the OpenVPN on or off in userspace so things are good.

 

I might tinker around with the kernel arguments (I've had mixed success trying to get crashkernel working on an Ubuntu machine with them) and see about getting that rescue shell.  A rescue mode would be useful. Also, I want to see if I can finally get minicom or some other serial interface connected with a laptop and the board's UART.  Thanks to both of you for the help.

 

[Elric]

My expierence in ubuntu and openvpn client is, that after installing the client is completly unconfigured, even the service isn't enabled. Also every line in /etc/default/openvpn are comments. The photo above shows a lot configured connections <Amsterdam to Zurich>.conf  placed in /etc/openvpn (after installation this directory contains usally only the "update-resolve-conf" and the sub-directories server and client, both empty), and also in /etc/default/openvpn "AUTOSTART=all" instead the default "#AUTOSTART=all".
With "AUTOSTART=none" in /etc/default/openvpn you turned off autostart completly. Guess you choose your prefered connection later on in your graphical desktop environment. Do you use a credential file for your connections or are you prompted for your username and password?