Terminal login loop 21.10

I'm installing ubuntu base following this guide: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Base/InstallationExample

The only thing I did different from the guide was using grub instead of syslinux as bootloader, currently I'm booting using manual grub commands because I don't have a grub.cfg, don't know how to create it without logging in.

I have already installed it on a test partition, I repeated the same steps on the main partition where I wanted it (on another disk) but something went wrong and I'm not able to log in.

When I insert the correct password some different things can happen:

• Sometimes I see for one frame the welcome message and the bash prompt
• Sometimes I see the messages

stopped Getty on tty1
starting Getty on tty1

• Sometimes just a black screen

That said the end result is always the same, after a while I return to the login screen asking for username and password.

I know that this question was asked many times but all the solution I found didn't worked for me.

I tried to reinstall grub, I updated systemd, I checked that all my files in my home directory (.bashec, .profile, .bash_logout) are equal to the ones in /etc/skel, I made other users but all have the same problem, I compared the permissions of the files in my home directory with the ones from the working installation, I even tried to restart the installation from the beginning with the same result.

If you want more debugging information tell me what to do to get them, keep in mind I'm not able to login, all I can do is access the filesystem from another installation.

Apparently it was indeed a permission problem, I checked all the files but I didn't checked the permissions of the filesystem root itself /.

This directory was readable only for root user. As a consequence the normal users can't see any directory in the system.

To fix this I mounted my root partition on /mnt/root and I fixed the permissions with something like:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/root
sudo chmod 755 /mnt/root

I didn't even knew I could edit the / permissions in this way.

After this the login from terminal worked fine, I have problems with wayland but I will open another question for that.

Edit:

Turned out that the Wayland problem was also related to / permissions. Also if now the directory is readable and I can boot in the system for some reason it is owned by systemd-coredump. I fixed this with:

sudo chown root:root /

This resolved the Wayland issue, don't know why but Wayland wants the / owned by root.