This problem started when I upgraded to Fedora 32 over a month ago. I’ve been putting this off because I have a little busy and I generally just ‘Log Out’ or ‘Suspend’ but now it’s becoming annoying.
Basically, after the upgrade to 32 I got the whole setup tour which you get on installing Fedora for the first time. I thought I had lost all my data on my old user however turns out the user is still there. I just have to access it by clicking ‘not listed?’ on the lock screen. This is annoying by itself but what’s even more annoying is the fact that it’s not visible in the Settings app as well.
The user is still there in /etc/passwd with the id of 1000.
It looks like you created a new user after the update. There is really nothing to worry about. You can regain access to your old account. I assume you are familiar with the terminal. Do the following on the terminal:
sudo ls /home
that should list all the user folders on the machine. That should remind you about the username you used before (because one of the folders will bear that username) Let’s use old_username as the example henceforth
sudo useradd -c puipuituipui old_username
You can replace puipuituipui with any text you want to see on the login screen.
Your old user should be recreated now. You should get a message telling you that the old user folder exists, and that nothing will be added to it.
sudo passwd old_username
Type your old password twice (or a new one to change it)
Logout!
You should now be able to login to the old user account with the password you just set
When I entered this command: sudo useradd -c puipuituipui old_username
I got this: useradd: user 'puipuituipui' already exists
The thing is the user still exists but isn’t visible in the login screen and in settings. I can still login using the ‘not listed?’ option in the login screen.
on id
I got uid=1000(puipuituipui) gid=1000(puipuituipui) groups=1000(puipuituipui),10(wheel) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023
Nope I’m an amateur to Linux and avoid anything which remotely sounds scary. My user just disappeared after the upgrade. Oh and I just noticed the settings app behaved like there are no users other than the one I made after the upgrade. Like not only does it not display my old account but it also doesn’t allow me to delete my new account or remove administrator privileges.
I guess if there was a way to somehow create a new user (which I accidentally did while trying out the useradd solution. The new user behaves normally.) and link it to the existing files and pull this off cleanly. That would do it.