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I created an account with no password for my 3 year old child. After some time of inactivity on that account, the session locks.

Then I cannot unlock the session. Trying to unlock with an empty password does not work, and there is no password to enter.

The easy solution for now is to disable the locking of the session, but I want the computer to auto-suspend after time-out.

Why can't I unlock without entering a password? Is it a bug or a feature? Is it even a known behavior?

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  • ...never tried it, but it seems a bug to me...
    – Rmano
    Jan 13, 2015 at 8:29
  • Which version of Ubuntu do you use?
    – user300458
    Jan 13, 2015 at 8:43
  • I use version 14.10.
    – Gauthier
    Jan 14, 2015 at 13:57

3 Answers 3

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This seems to be a legitimate bug in lightdm, the program that manages the lock screen on Ubuntu 14.04 and later. I was able to reproduce this issue in Ubuntu 14.04.2.

I've filed a bug report with the lightdm project, you can find it here. Make sure to comment on the bug report if you've experienced this issue!

The workaround (as first mentioned by user Alcolo47 here) is to click the "Change User" button to return to the main login screen. Then you can log in as usual.

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  • That is just a duplicate of my answer! It is good that you filed the bug report, but I don't like it if people just copy the contents of an answer to repost it to the same question!
    – Byte Commander ♦
    Mar 10, 2015 at 11:25
  • You might want to look at this post on meta about when it's probably appropriate to perform an edit instead of post another answer. There was a more in depth discussion in another meta question, but I can't seem to find it.
    – RobotHumans
    Mar 10, 2015 at 11:34
  • It's an obvious solution to the problem, and I was able to shorten your explanation from a paragraph to a sentence. Despite that I still said "as mentioned" to credit you. Only one answer can be marked as correct, so I wanted to reiterate the workaround (already known) in addition to the confirmation that it's a bug and the link to the bug report (new information) so that everything relevant would be in one place.
    – Alex Ryan
    Mar 10, 2015 at 18:16
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I also have a non-password account for my little brother and therefore I'm used to the same problem (running Ubuntu 14.10). I don't know whether it is a bug, but I think so.

My solution now is:
When you locked the screen, there is the small window with only the locked user name and a text field to type in the password. Here, you have to click on the gear symbol in the upper right corner of your screen and choose "Change user..." (don't know the exact title, I have the German version).
Then you get to the same login screen as after a normal boot or complete logout. Here you can now click on the non-password account and log in again without typing a non-existent password.

I hope I could help you.

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From the Arch Linux Wiki:

If you want to bypass the password prompt in GDM then simply add the following line on the first line of /etc/pam.d/gdm-password:

auth sufficient pam_succeed_if.so user ingroup nopasswdlogin

Then, add the group nopasswdlogin to your system. See Groups for group descriptions and group management commands. Now, add your user to the nopasswdlogin group and you will only have to click on your username to login.

Everything if translated in commands to be run by the user <username> in order to bypass the password prompt would result in:

  1. sudo sed -i 'auth sufficient pam_succeed_if.so user ingroup nopasswdlogin' /etc/pam.d/gdm-password
  2. sudo groupadd nopasswdlogin
  3. sudo gpasswd -a <username> nopasswdlogin
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