unable to log in to tty with any user?

djspacewhale · 2025-11-26 04:56:18

howdy y'all! I recently redownloaded Arch on my desktop and am having issues logging in via tty or, really, any display manager that's not the sddm that came with plasma in the archinstall. I set a fido2 key with my default account which I though could be the issue, but even creating a new user account without a password and attempting to log in to tty with that throws a "login incorrect" error. I want to move my DM from sddm to lemurs and this is preventing me from doing so, and also has mandated more than a few btrfs snapshot rollbacks when I can't log in to anything after a reboot. where can I go next to troubleshoot and fix this?

cryptearth · 2025-11-26 07:17:08

djspacewhale wrote:

a new user account without a password and

a user account without password means its disabled - you have to set a password

seth · 2025-11-26 07:35:31

I set a fido2 key with my default account which

… means you fumbled around in pam, specifically the SDDM pam (only)?

Ftr:

cryptearth wrote:

a user account without password means its disabled

isn't entirely correct but the common userspace tools (notably passwd) will nudge you away from it.
Nevertheless with the right combo of u's and d's and dashes you can absolutely create a passwordless user (as you can with vim on etc/shadow - something one should CONSIDER EVEN LESS!)

djspacewhale · 2025-11-26 19:51:04

that'd be that archinstall messed around with the sddm pam? should I add the key to another pam file then?

I'll add a password to that dummy account and see if I can log in to tty with it then. it certainly doesn't have a u2f associated with it, so we should learn something from that.

seth · 2025-11-26 19:54:15

archinstall allows you to automatically install and configure fprintd?
What of https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fprint#Configuration did you do?

djspacewhale · 2025-11-26 22:26:00

I'm using a Yubikey, not a built-in fingerprint reader.

seth · 2025-11-26 22:35:49

So what of https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/YubiKe … n_with_PAM did you do?

djspacewhale · 2025-11-26 22:52:45

https://dl.depot.4d2.org/toALujjBsV9e.mp4 this is what I did when I set up my system - passwordless sudo using u2f and passwordless login (though of course sddm doesn't like that regardless). that's what I did to get to where I'm unable to log in to tty via *any* account - I did add a password to that other dummy account but it can't log in either.

Last edited by djspacewhale (2025-11-26 22:53:13)

seth · 2025-11-27 22:03:21

So somethingsomething archinstall…
Let's see what it does:

for pkg in $(for name in /etc/pam.d/*; do pacman -Qoq $name; done | sort -u); do sudo pacman -Qkk $pkg; done

Arch Linux

#1 2025-11-26 04:56:18

unable to log in to tty with any user?

#2 2025-11-26 07:17:08

Re: unable to log in to tty with any user?

#3 2025-11-26 07:35:31

Re: unable to log in to tty with any user?

#4 2025-11-26 19:51:04

Re: unable to log in to tty with any user?

#5 2025-11-26 19:54:15

Re: unable to log in to tty with any user?

#6 2025-11-26 22:26:00

Re: unable to log in to tty with any user?

#7 2025-11-26 22:35:49

Re: unable to log in to tty with any user?

#8 2025-11-26 22:52:45

Re: unable to log in to tty with any user?

#9 2025-11-27 22:03:21

Re: unable to log in to tty with any user?

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