My Troubleshooting account is untouched. Created for only one purpose… to see if the issue I have on my primary account is also present in a freash account.
Have multiple kernels installed. For the same reason as above. I have 4 kernels installed. As of January 25, 2025 they are: linux 6.12.10.arch1-1, linux-lts 6.6.72-1, linux-zen 6.12.10.zen1-1, and linux 6.12.11-x64v2-xanmod1-1
Then, when seeking help on the forums, you’re armed with information that may help someone help you.
That’s totally up to you. Basically just something with either a different software load (esp DE) or another track of updates. Ideally maybe you don’t even update (or infrequently) the alt-distro. Just being there when you want/need it:)
I remember the arch grub incidence…all too well
What’s the idea of having a seperate troubleshooting account, instead of creating another account when you actually need to test something out? That way you will start of with a clean account while if you keep the same account around for troubleshooting everything it might not be as clean as a newly created one.
Actually that’s easily taken care of…by wiping .config ;0
Another thing that’s saved me sometimes, always enable ssh access from remote. If monitor/video card/drivers go insane, you can still get in.
Two accounts is the first thing I done on Linux while setting it up, and done the same on Windows installations for years as it saved me a few times in the past since Windows could get user profile corruptions. What made me start doing it was Windows 7 flat out forgot my password (corruption) to my account and wouldn’t log in once and I had no second account. It also helped me on Linux as I accidentally removed admin permissions from my account early on and just logged in to the second account and re-added my main account in to admin permissions, a quick 2 minute fix.
I also have three kernels too (Two additional) although I haven’t had to use the other two yet.
I have multiple kernels and i dual boot and I’m running Nvidia for pete’s sake! I rarely have any issues. I don’t need multiple accounts as i am running btrfs with btrs-assistant and snapper-support.
You can just as easily create a new account when needed or rename .config of your normal user to get a clean profile and then remove the new one and rename the original back to the original one and not everything is stored in .config since there are exceptions.
There’s still the root user account you can use to login into a tty and create a new account from there if you can’t login with your normal user account. I’m getting the impression though that @UncleSpellbinder is specifically talking about using a second account for troubleshooting for something that is not working under his main account so that he can use the second account with a clean profile, which can be done by creating that account when it is needed. But whatever works for the person using it, I just don’t see the advantage of always having a second account there when you can create it when needed.
Yes. Exactly. I just prefer to have that clean account ready and waiting instead of going through the process of creating one. Having that second user account available at all times does no harm, and speeds things up in case (for whatever reason), I can’t create that account when I need it.
As someone with one acct right now, this is an interesting conversation.
This is a question to everyone,
If you find a problem only exists in the regular user account and NOT in the ‘backup’ acct…then what does that mean?
The problem is related to profile? Or something exclusively installed by ‘regular’ user? What does the ‘only-one-user-affected’ mean to troubleshooting?
—I just worked 13 hours today and have not had a beer yet so I know there is something I am not thinking through–thank you.
Makes me wonder what kinds of problems are usually associated with a single acct vs two accts, but that is a deeper question than I originally asked…just knowing the answer to that might expedite troubleshooting as well.
For me it could just be an old habit I carried over from Windows, or I work in IT and we usually have two accounts on PCs (Although one is admin and one is normal use, while on Linux for me they all have Admin).
At least for me with Windows there would be potential user profile corruption where your profile could be inaccessible, and unless you have a second account you will pretty much have to reinstall the OS or restore from backup. Or at work I would get issues from users at some point every year where something got corrupted on their profile such as Microsoft Excel or Outlook would get corrupted in such a way but was no issue on another user on the same PC which narrows the issue as not being from the software but user files for that program so I would have to recreate their user profile rather than spend hours trying to figure it out as some Microsoft issues are wacky and random.
So for me I made a second account on Linux “just in case” since I’m new to Linux, not that I necessarily know if a second one is necessary and just didn’t want to risk having an issue and then realising I forgot to make a second account and need one.
After installing Arch manually though I of course found out there are ways to fix issues without a second account like using the root account (For example removing my own account out of admin group accidentally). I have used tty only once but didn’t fully know what it was at the time but I assume I can likely fix things through there too.
thanks. I understand. with Win you had to. I was glad their acct #2 was always Admin as I recalled.
absolutely makes sense. maybe profile corruption is the right answer here to my vague-ish question asking which kinds of problems attach themselves to once account and not the other.
thanks for replying to me.
This. On my laptop I have Endeavour and Linux Mint DE. I just boot into Mint every once in a while just to make sure it is working. I update it once a week by chroot-ing into it and doing it from Endeavour. Since it is DE based I really only have updates once a month, but I am used to doing it monthly in Endeavour.
Crazy thing is I have had less problems running Endeavour than I ever had with Ubuntu or Mint. I almost gave up on Arch after installing Manjaro, then realized it was not Arch.
