After a recent upgrade I rebooted my system. At login (KDE) username is already filled in. I typed in my password and the screen went blank, then reverted back to the login screen. I thought maybe I typed it in wrong so I changed an iteration. This time it give it the shake and wrong password message. All other iterations around the password I thought I had right do the same, give the incorrect pass message. Tried booting from an earlier snapshot, same thing. Tried logging in through tty, all password iterations show incorrect password. Tried recovery mode and changing my password, back at login new password gets the incorrect password shake, old password still does the blank screen for a second then back to login screen.
Hi @Coffeefella
Maybe your issue is caused by a bug, but before jumping to conclusions letās run a quick diagnostic. Iām going to give you a whole series of commands so we donāt have to wait for your answers one by oneāthis way you can collect all the outputs at once, and then we can move on to the next steps immediately.
Check available disk space and filesystem type
df -h
Verify the filesystem type and the total, used, and available space.
Note any error messages or 80-100 % usage
Verify permissions on ā/etc/passwdā and ā/etc/shadowā
ls -l /etc/passwd /etc/shadow
Ensure /etc/passwd is -rw-rār-- root:root
and /etc/shadow is -rw------- root:shadow
Check if your username appears in ā/etc/passwdā
grep '^<your-username>:' /etc/passwd
replace <your-username> with your actual login
Check if your user account is locked in /etc/shadow
sudo grep '^<your-username>:' /etc/shadow
replace <your-username> with your actual login
Check for a leading ! or *, which would lock the account.
Check account lock/expiry status
sudo passwd -S <your-username>
replace <your-username> with your actual login
Look for status flags: āLā = locked, āPā = usable password.
Note the date of the last password change.
Search recent PAM/SDDM errors in the journal
sudo journalctl -b --no-pager | grep -E "pam_unix|sddm|login"
Copy any lines showing āauthentication failureā or āpermission denied.ā
Include timestamps around your login attempts.
With these details, we can determine whether the issue lies in disk capacity, file permissions, account locking, or PAM configuration and recommend the precise fix.
(Please excuse my imperfect English)
If the OP canāt login , how are they going to run commands?? (maybe I missed something)
To me it looks like an AI generated post. Thus one can not expect any intelligent thinking.
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In my 35+ years working with computers, Iāve had this happen 2-3:times.
Youāll never guess what was rwong one of those times. The keyboard. Yes, if I tapped the E or S or X key, the output would be āEEā or āSSā or āXXā ā¦ the keyboard is defective and ādouble typingā (repeating) those letters.
Have you booted up, and at the initial DE login screen, switch to vt1 (ctrl alt f1) , login as root user ā¦ then change the userās password?
If you do that, Iād suggest to start a text editor, like nano, and test the keyboard output first.
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Do you have another desktop installed to try a login to that?
He never said he couldnāt log in; he said his password kept returning an error constantly, which means he can still poke around in the operating system from a tty. In hindsight, I really should have removed āsudoā ā it just muddles things. I didnāt generate these commands using an AI; thereās Google, the various wikis, and over 30 years of my experience with computers."
.
As long as it accepts the password ā¦
.
hmmmm.
As the screen does not shake when the password is typed in, the user is not blocked and the password is correct. So it is possible to login as user on a console.
There is an issue with the startup of the DE. Journal might give a hint.
he can run all the commands without sudo; Iāve personally verified it.
Thanks for all the comments. A few bits of clarifications, and additional information that will probably be the answer or at least lead somebody to help me more clearly.
I cannot login to tty. I cannot enter any information into tty as the first thing it asks for is user name and pass.
I can login in recovery mode. I changed my password there, but it did not translate to changing my password at login or in tty.
In recovery mode I tried sudo zypper dup and received āRepository āMain update Repositoryā is invalid. Could not resolve host:download.opensuse.orgā
As I recall the last time I updated I received a message something similar to this and that if I tried to update it might be bad. I guess I did and it was. When I had updated it wouldnāt let me run tailscale because it was on an older Glibc. I went into yast and tried to make sure all the repositories were in place and working, saved and reset. Here we are.
Sorry this part left my memory. Iām a tired dad whoās playing/trying to learn Linux late at night and can only get to it now and again. For what itās worth Iāve got tumbleweed on another machine and itās run flawless. I had thought to use this as a server or for containers and not have to update as much with Leap. Thanks for the help!
Havenāt gone through all these yet, but "sudo passed -S comes back with "user does not exist!
Can you log on as root???
Also you may try rescue mode. Should be an option on grub second level
ok in tty it did let me login as root. Found that my user listed at log is capitalized but in the command line it is not. Retried to login under the user uncapitalized to the same overall effect.
Good you still have control. Start yast from tty. This runs as old school, ie no mouse and navigate with tabs and space bar etc.
try resetting the user password from there.
Just type yast
Logged in root in tty. Did sudo zypper dup and it updated with no issues finding repositories. Reset and tried to login, same issues. Logged into root in tty the went into yast and changed the password. Went back to screen and same thing just with the new password now. Screen goes dark, then back to login screen.
Ok more fun. In yast I created a new user. Went back to login screen and that user can log in! Worst case scenario I can work with this as I didnāt have anything important on the other user. But it is annoying and I had a lot of settings in place that I liked.
You should NOT use zypper dup on Leap unless going to a newer version. use zypper up
I just posted to suggest the same and read your post. Deleted that now. 
Are you using Plasma X11 or Plasma Wayland session?
You can try to rename a few user config files (from a VT logged in as the user concerned).
Iād start with this oneā¦
mv ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc.old
You could also backup ~/.config/kwinrc by renaming it similarly to the above. Others worth eliminating temporarily are are ~/.config/kdeglobals and ~/.config/plasmarc
They all get recreated when you next login to the graphical environment as the user concerned.
See how that goes.
If you can log in as root you can change (as root) the password of any user:
$ passwd <user>