When refreshing my PopOS install, I have to create a new user even though users are preserved

[benuski]

Hello!

I just refreshed my PopOS install on my HP Dev One, using the button found in the Settings menu. The recovery partition was fully up to date, it successfully asked for and decrypted my hard drive, and refreshed the install successfully. However, after re-install I was forced to go through the new user setup and configuration, as if I had installed PopOS for the first time.

I did that and then logged out of that new user and into my existing user. I deleted the new user that I had just created, but when I rebooted I was dumped into the new user creation flow again. Also, my existing user never showed up as an option in the GDM login menu, and when I went to the Users section of the Settings menu, the newly created user was the only one shown. So I couldn't delete the new user from there either.

I would expect that the refresh OS flow would prioritize getting me back into my existing user account, or at least make that an easily accessible option.

If this is the wrong place to submit this bug, let me know and I can move it.

Thanks!

[benuski]

On my Thelio Mira, I did the refresh as well, and I had two user accounts on that machine. It will pop up the secondary account I had on my computer, but my primary account acts just like it does on my laptop. I can log in, but it doesn't appear in the GDM menu.

[mmstick]

Check your account's configuration file in /var/lib/AccountsService/users/ to see if it has SystemAccount=true set.

[benuski]

Yes, /var/lib/AccountsService/users/<username> on both machines has SystemAccount=true

[benuski]

I am also using zsh as my default shell, it looks like that is a possible correlation sometimes. Originally, I changed my default shell to zsh using chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh. I'll try switching the shell to zsh using chsh -s /bin/zsh and see if that does anything.

[benuski]

Switching that and removing the SystemAccount=true line did make my original account appear in the GDM login screen on next login. I haven't changed any of these on my Thelio Mira yet, so if there is any useful testing I can do I'll hold off on doing this until I can help.