Kubuntu 23.10 login screen freezes if password is expired

[Mister Pi]

I checked to see if this problem has been posted already. I found this (https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...n-login-screen) but that thread has been locked because the version is past EOL. Even though the bug still exists in 23.10 (and goes back at least as far as 20 according to that post).

I used adduser to create accounts for family members, with simple passwords, and did 'sudo passwd --expire xxx' so they would have to change it when logging in. What happened is that when the user tried to log in, the password was rejected the first time (even though it was correct), and when typed in the second time, the login screen froze. Moving the mouse would move the cursor but that was it.

I was able to switch to a virtual console with either CNTL-ALT-F4 or F5, but none of the others. I was able to log in as xxx and the password, whereupon I was immediately prompted for a new password. After a reboot, the login screen worked with the new password. But if I used my own acct with sudo to mark the password expired again, then the next login attempt to that account would freeze again.

It's something about marking the password expired that messes up the Kubuntu login screen. This HowToGeek article (https://www.howtogeek.com/806104/create-linux-user/) seems to show it working for at least one distro.

[oshunluvr]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...m/+bug/2025149

[Mister Pi]

That post referred to Kubuntu although it's a general Ubuntu forum. I would assume the bug is in the KDE login code and wouldn't affect Ubuntu, unless both are calling a common library. (I don't have an Ubuntu system to test this.)

[claydoh]

That post referred to Kubuntu although it's a general Ubuntu forum. I would assume the bug is in the KDE login code and wouldn't affect Ubuntu, unless both are calling a common library. (I don't have an Ubuntu system to test this.)

Remember that Kubuntu is Ubuntu, and shares the exact same software repositories and other distro infrastructure. Kubuntu bugs *are* ubuntu bugs. In the case of the login, K/ubuntu provide the SDDM implementation, so a bug report on ubuntu's Launchpad is appropriate. Ubuntu bugs can be triaged and tied to other bug platforms, such as KDE's.

However, the SDDM project isn't (yet) a full-on KDE project, so there are no reports of this there. There are some on SDDM's github, and there looks to be some code for this being implemented, but it doesn't appear to be complete.
Then, once that has been added, the theme needs to incorporate it, and the disro's PAM authentication system may also possibly need to be tweaked. The official themes from SDDM ( Maya, Elarun, and Maldives - available via apt, not ones from the KDE store) should already have the code in Kubuntu 23.10, so it is just a wait for the rest of the code and implementation. Which could take forever, based on the snails pace the volunteers devs on the project take.

One can use other login managers, I'd think. lightdm may still work and support this.