Standard account not accepting any passwords

Support
1

I’ve Standard accounts for my kids on our laptop (Testing Branch), one asked if she could change her password. Thinking it’d be straightforward I said “Sure!” System Settings > Users > select her account > Change Password, enter and confirm lines filled in, OK.

She asks if it worked—“I don’t know, logout and log back in.” She logs out, types her password…the login options freeze up—the clock’s still going, I can move the mouse around but can’t do anything else. Had to force reboot (didn’t know how to tty last night) and either it rejects the passwords tried (incorrect) or it goes into this state. CTRL-ALT-F2/tty works for other accounts, not hers, always incorrect. X11 or Wayland, doesn’t matter.

I also tried changing her password through my Admin account to no avail. Changing the password looks like it works, but obviously doesn’t. Oddly enough, when I tried just switching user (from my account), the screen just went black—related or not, I’d like to just get my daughter’s account back. Can I restore her account’s permissions/password from the Admin account?

I ran into this post and feel this is the closest way to describe what’s occurring. Also, through tty, running startx KDE Wallet is the first thing that pops up, prompting for a password—I’m wondering if the password database/file(s) are corrupted.

inxi output (I’m not sure what extra info I might need);

speed/min/max: 1128/400/3600 MHz Kernel: 5.18.11-1-MANJARO x86_64 Up: 1h 30m
Mem: 4585.0/7738.6 MiB (59.2%) Storage: 238.47 GiB (40.3% used) Procs: 265
2

regardless of the desktop environment
I’d never have tried to use the GUI
rather I’d have opened a terminal and issued the command:
passwd
from within the account you want to change it
or
passwd daughters_user_name
from another

It’ll ask for the current password
then let you enter the new one - twice, so to be sure they match

To do it from the admin account, sudo could be required
or you’ll be prompted - don’t know, I don’t have multiple accounts here to quickly try.

The admin should not be required to give the old password to set a new one on a user account …

Try that.

I do not know whether the wallet password will get changed by this procedure
it is unlikely -
you might need to go through the GUI for that.

2 Likes
3

That worked, we thank you so much! Yes, I had to use sudo BTW. Now KDE Wallet is giving problems and won’t accept her password, but she’s in. I suppose that’s a topic for another thread…

4

the wallet password is likely still the old one

but I don’t know

another thread perhaps …

5

It is. If it is to be automatically unlocked on login, the passwords have to match.

6

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