Arch Linux

Varg

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2010-07-07

Posts: 272

i3lock: cannot unlock

When using i3lock, every time I try to unlock I get the "wrong password" message. The only way to get out of i3lock is by switching to a tty and killing the process.

/etc/pam.d/i3lock:

$ cat /etc/pam.d/i3lock 
#
# PAM configuration file for the i3lock screen locker. By default, it includes
# the 'system-auth' configuration file (see /etc/pam.d/login)
#

auth include system-auth

I did not make any changes to /etc/pam.d/login or etc/pam.d/system-auth. After searching a bit, I've only found a similar problem on the forum about xscreensaver but that topic is unsolved and xscreensaver works fine for me.

Last edited by Varg (2014-06-21 19:33:01)

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stibi

Member

Registered: 2006-10-10

Posts: 34

Re: i3lock: cannot unlock

Hi,
I have the same problem.
I can't find anything wrong with pam configuration, not sure what's causing this

stibi

Member

Registered: 2006-10-10

Posts: 34

Re: i3lock: cannot unlock

Hi again,
I think I've solved the problem at least for my case.
The problem is with $USER environmental variable.

i3lock gets the current user from there, to make a connection with PAM using the username and then authenticate against this username to unlock.
See what you get there:

    echo $USER

It should return your username, nothing else. I got this:

    $ echo $USER
    %{%{%}%}%n

This is something from zsh, oh-my-zsh, or my zsh theme, not sure yet, but that's really not my username

How to fix it:
* find out why I have that mess in the $USER and fix it
* export USER=yourusername && i3lock
* modify how i3lock resolves the current user (https://github.com/i3/i3lock/pull/3)

Hope it helps you.

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: i3lock: cannot unlock

How to fix it:

pacman -R oh-my-zsh

Fixed that for you...

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Badacadabra

Member

From: France

Registered: 2017-01-23

Posts: 1

Re: i3lock: cannot unlock

I spent a few hours investigating on this issue and the best solution I have found consists in setting extended permissions on /etc/shadow: sudo chmod +r /etc/shadow

It is probably not ideal in terms of security and a better solution could be to create a "shadow" group (instead of root) that would be used by third-party applications. I know Ubuntu uses this trick, but honestly I am not an expert in PAM configuration to reproduce this behavior in Arch...

Moreover, you can still use i3lock from a terminal using "sudo". The root user's password should always be recognized when you try to unlock.

Last edited by Badacadabra (2017-01-24 00:48:38)

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ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,715

Re: i3lock: cannot unlock

Badacadabra, Welcome to the Arch Linux forums.   Thank you for the relevant contribution, but I am going to go ahead and close this two year old thread.

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