I put a fresh install of the newest version on a not new Dell Lattitude laptop which originally had Windoze 10 on it. If it matters, I went with the cosmic desktop. I used the same password I have used for years on my computers.
The computer worked fine for about a week. Now it won’t accept my password. The only thing I did differently was the last time I used the machine while it worked, is that I let it snooze rather than shutting it down completely.
I would be happy to give more details on the specifics of my compute, but I can’t get into it. I would solve the problem with a new install if I could shut it down and restart. Right now, I am letting the battery drain down to the point it shuts off with the notion of maybe doing a fresh install at that point.
KISS… not just your favorite ghay band. Make certain caps lock is not active. Make certain there is no space before or after your password. Make sure you are logging into the intended account.
If all that fails you can select switch user which should bring you back to the main login screen where you can select shutdown. (not certain, I don’t play in Cosmic).
If that does not work you can hold the power button down until the machine shuts off. I would try rebooting at least once to see if you can log in.
If you enabled snapshots you can rollback to an earlier time and probably be back in business in a matter of seconds. If not you can reload the OS and enable snapshots on your second go.
ctr-alt-f4, can you login there? You can hold the power button down on pretty much anything to shut it off.
Just a little advice, make your login password something short and simple. You will use it for every sudo command and you don’t want to have to type 37Fcs!KmnT67R@&UmP everytime. Everything else, encrypt with super strong password.
You likely triggered the automatic lockout after 3 failed attempts.
Can happen easily if you have caps lock on, or just have typos 3 times in a row. If you have different keyboard layouts installed, you might also have had the wrong one active.
When this happens, press CtrlAltF3 to get a text-based terminal login screen.
Try logging in as yourself first. If it fails, login as root instead, same password.
You can use this to unlock a user:
faillock --user <username> --reset
CtrlAltF2 to get back to the graphical interface.
The lock should also reset automatically after 10 minutes.
The behavior is controlled by /etc/security/faillock.conf.
You can add a line deny = 0 to disable it.
Consider an XKCD password instead. Easier to remember and type fast, harder to brute force!
Big Thanks guys! When I came home today, the battery was nearly dead. It let me in like it was no big deal. weird! I don’t know what was wrong or what I did right, but it works now. Kinda like the woman I live with.
Exact same thing happened to me, then suddenly it worked. All I did was update and reboot. would not accept my password for an hr then finally workedd.
I sorta remember having a problem with passphrase on a totally different linux distro. It would happen right after I changed the passphrase in the terminal or in the applet. I think it was on MX Linux, maybe. Anyways, I learned that if I first carefully exited, then quit all programs, then logged out, and finally reboot (exactly)… then the problem didn’t happen.
But if I messed around too much right after changing the passphrase, then I risked locking myself out. It kinda reminded me of the olden days when you had to reboot after formatting a partition or gparted would get fully confused and wouldn’t work.