Unable to ssh into NextcloudPi

I ran a backup which had some problems, pigz processes kept running, but the backup process seemed to have stopped. So I decided to reboot the NextcloudPi from the web console.

I use LUKS-encrypted external disks (one for data, one for backup), so I have to ssh into the NextcloudPi to unlock the disks.

After the reboot, I could not access the NextcloudPi any more over ssh. I get:

$ ssh nextcloudpi.local
Please note that SSH may not work until a valid user has been set up.

See http://rptl.io/newuser for details.

I connected the NextcloudPi to a screen and keyboard.

The TUI opens with in the top left: "Package configuration"

The TUI asks me for the keyboard layout, I provide it, next the NextcloudPi spawns the TUI to change the pi user

Which user would you like to rename:
pi

pi is prefilled. When I hit Cancel, I get the keyboard question again, and after that the rename question. I did not change the pi user yet.

I checked my bash history and noted that I did some commands in the past like: apt-get upgrade -y --without-new-pkgs, but also sudo apt full-upgrade. Maybe these commands are the root cause of this issue somehow.

When I via the screen and keyboard go to another terminal with e.g. Ctrl-Alt-F3, I get a prompt to login.

I provide username and password, but the prompt seems to "hang". When I press Ctrl-c, I get warnings and a prompt:

grep: /var/run/.ncp-latest-version: No such file or directory

(and some irrelevant info about Wi-Fi and country)

I investigated as root the /home/pi directory with find. I just see .bash_logout, .bashrc, and .profile. So the pi user seems to be totally inactive.

sudo ncp-report seems to hang after some initial minor output.

I'm inclined to rename the pi user now to see if this solves any issues.

Start with the reported post-reboot SSH failure, the console TUI loop, the login hang, the missing /var/run/.ncp-latest-version file, and the ncp-report behavior. No source file or test is named; completion would require identifying a reproducible cause and documenting or implementing a verified fix for SSH access after reboot.