I enter my password, and it tells me that I “need to change my password immediately”. It won’t let me use my account, unless I type in a new password or enter the old password 10 times or so.
After repeatedly entering the old password, it will eventually unlock my screen. However, the system date increases by a few hundred years and wifi stops working. Everything turns back to normal after rebooting.
This hasn’t happened for a while now, but it used to happen every few weeks. I find it really strange, both the system date and wifi bug, and the fact that I am demanded to change my password.
Did this happen to anyone else, and does anyone know what and who might have caused this? I am curious.
(The distro is debian 12 and the lock-screen/desktop-environment is GNOME 43.6)
Certainly not a computer expert, but consider the option that the battery on your motherboard might be running low. If the hardware itself is older, I would try swapping the button cell. I’ve seen many weird issues get resolved this way, although in theory it should not mess up anything but system time.
Yes, I can’t see why this would explain my computer suddenly demanding that I must change my password, which is what I am most interested to know the reason for.
Linux passwords can be set to expire. A non-expiring password is sometimes just set to expire so far in the future that it will not be reached by the user (such as 100 or 200 years). A really broken clock could surpass that and cause expiry.
I was thinking potentially if the system thinks the password was set 200 years in the future it would also be invalid
Neither can I, but it might be a combination of several issues. Like I said, if the cell is older (and you can reach it easily) just swap it, should be a 2032 (aka THE button cell). If it works, perfect, if it doesn’t no harm was done.