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I installed Windows 10 Pro on my old ThinkPad R60 and shrank the NTFS partition to 50% to make space for a dual boot Linux installation. Then I installed Linux Mint Debian Edition 3, creating separate EXT4 root and home partitions with GParted in the process, and having Grub2 installed into /dev/sda1 which is the boot partition for both OS. After installation, I booted into the new Linux and found that I cannot log in ("Invalid password, please try again"). I'm positive that I typed in the credentials correctly, I also reinstalled Linux twice using different credentials, but the problem persists. What might be the issue here?

Stack EG
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david
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  • Are you able to boot into single user mode, and check accounts and passwords? – RudiC Oct 03 '18 at 14:50
  • Firstly, ensure that it's not a num- or capslock issue. Have you tried logging in on a tty instead of a graphical greeter? You can usually get there by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Fx, x being a number from 1 to 12; it depends on your setup which ones are designated, but you usually can easily find one by trying. There, you can test your login against the login shell. Just enter the username and press enter, then the password and enter. – rudib Oct 03 '18 at 15:36
  • Could it happen that it swaps between your native and English keyboard settings? Just try to type you PW as the user name and see if there are any oddities. Otherwise try this - it's similar for LMDE and also applies to use-cases outside a VM. – FelixJN Oct 03 '18 at 21:18
  • @RudiC: I looked up Single User Mode and tried to boot into it following the instructions here, but I get the error message "Cannot open access to console, the root account is locked. See sulogin(8) man page for more details." - @rudib, Fiximan: I verified the keyboard settings and also tried different credentials after reinstalling LMDE several times. Also tried tty1-tty6 with the same result. – david Oct 04 '18 at 08:28

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After entering really "dumb" credentials during installation (e.g. "a" for username, password), I'm able to log in. For some reason, LMDE 3 seems to have an issue with "complex" credentials. Specifically, numerals as username seem to create problems, even though they are accepted initially.

david
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  • Please note the discussion on this topic here. This is not LMDE-specific, yet would be better to be declined in the first place. – FelixJN Oct 04 '18 at 12:41