Random Login Screen on Kicksecure

Support
1

Stock installation via latest Kicksecure 18 ISO onto laptop hardware.

Randomly after selecting one of the Kicksecure boot options I end up on this login screen:

(Unable to embed image or pastebin apparently)

You will have to take my word that it is a graphical login screen, black with a white login box and text in the centre of the screen (not terminal) asking for username.

Only a reboot and reattempt of the same boot procedure results in the expected outcome (booting and logging into Kicksecure as per usually.

The issue occurs unpredictably every now and again - usually after I have forgotten about it it will crop up again.

Though likely unrelated to the cause, the issue occurs on different hardware such as X230, T440p, T430.

Fresh installations of re-downloaded ISO has not mitigated it.

Any one else observed this one?

2 Likes
2

Likely the same issue as:

The same debugging steps would apply. Copying-and-pasting here for convenience:

Can you boot into sysmaint mode, and run sudo journalctl -u greetd.service? If there isn’t any personal information in the logs (there very likely is not), it would be best to share them in their entirety.

Many of the messages there that look like errors probably aren’t or aren’t important, such as:

  • requirements "uid eq 0" not met by user "sysmaint"
  • Greeter daemon was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionPathExists=!/run/rads/rads-block-display-manager-startup.status)
  • XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is unset

Other messages would be worthwhile to look for. (Failed to create session: Resource deadlock avoided and error: check_children: greeter exited without creating a session may also be normal, but I’m not 100% sure.)

Edit: Also, what virtualizer are you using? I haven’t seen this bug before in VirtualBox or KVM, I’m currently trying to reproduce it in VirtualBox but without success.

2 Likes
3

Cheers - I thought I was the only one.

2 Likes
4

Did you by any chance inserted/using USB/Flash drive? (Specially you will see USBguard popup at the top right corner).

1 Like
5

I can’t recall - I’ll test it out when I get back to a computer. One of my installs is itself a full USB install but I have come across the issue on the regular install to internal drive as well.

Do you mean for me to see if I am tripping the untrusted usb security feature?

2 Likes
6

I have gone through all of the different boot modes whilst plugging in an assortment of usb devices (flash drives, keyboards, mice etc) as well as plugging in some more after login.

It hasn’t triggered the issue (just the expected usbGuard security pop-ups).

2 Likes
10

Similar but different issue:

2 Likes
11

When I was booted into sysmaint after some time of being idle I had a login screen like lockscreen…Is this what you are referring to here?

I never set a passwd for sysmaint btw

1 Like
12

Did the screen read Login:, or did it read Screen locked. Type your password and press Enter to unlock.?

2 Likes
14

Hi there,

Not sure if totally related but I have noticed that:

  1. when my laptop is idle for too long (didn’t measure how long though)
  2. and within power management settings the idless watcher is enabled
  3. and set Lock screen when idle (both on AC and on Battery)
  4. and a USB drive is plugged and seems to be idle (led blinking)
  5. the lock screen does NOT accept any keyboard entry.

It appears it’s impossible to unlock the laptop and only a hard shutdown (long press the power button) is the only solution left.

Anyone else facing this issue?

1 Like
15

Are you plugging in a new keyboard via USB and then attempting to use it to unlock the screen? If so, USBGuard may be blocking it. See:

2 Likes
16

Nope, no external keyboard. Just a USB hard drive plugged.

I have noticed that if there’s no USB hard drive plugged even after few hours of screen lockedi, it can be unlocked normally.

So, it seems that the USB hard drive going idle is the cause of the problem. If I am not mistaken in the latest released version of kicksecure 18 yesterday, now extrenal hard drives auto unmount is disabled, maybe this will have a beneficial effect here. To be rested…

1 Like
17

Very weird. I have an external hard drive that I can probably use to test on my end. USBGuard shouldn’t be interfering if the keyboard is just a laptop built-in one (even if it uses USB internally, USBGuard should accept it because it was present at bootup). I can’t imagine why swaylock (the screenlocker we use) would care about an external USB drive being attached though.

2 Likes
18

Weird indeed. Can’t say more, it’s just a guess on my side.

If I am not mistaken, I may have experienced on another laptop the same problem when I was running Kicksecure 17.

1 Like