Infinite loop: passcode entry -> lock-screen, repeat

[Merc]

I've had this happen a few times where my Linux machine would (seemingly) randomly stop accepting my user password, on my desktop computer and my PinePhone. I searched it up and, somewhat unsurprisingly, repeatedly failing to enter the correct user password (typically 3 times) in a short period of time will disable your ability to use sudo for a length of time (usually 10 minutes). This has the effect of locking you in your lock screen seemingly randomly if you're unaware that this was a possibility.

You can see this happening by plugging a keyboard into your PinePhone, hitting Ctrl+Alt+F1 and attempting to login only for it to show you that you have been locked out of using sudo for repeatedly entering an incorrect password. You can observe the same thing by simply SSHing into the PinePhone and trying to login that way.

To get around this, login as root (again either through using a keyboard plugged into the PinePhone or SSH, note though that sshd will by default not let you login as root user so if you haven't set PermitRootLogin yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config already you're out of luck on this option) and simply enter

Code:

faillock --user alarm --reset

"alarm" in my username, you would enter you own obviously. This should fix the problem, assuming that this is the problem you've been experiencing. Enter Ctrl+Alt+F7 to take you back to the lock screen (if F7 doesn't bring you to the lock screen try F6, F5, etc...).

I went ahead and did the dirty work of forcefully shutting the phone down and that seems to resolve the issue as well though is not ideal for obvious reasons.