Getting locked out of an active session

[TomHejret]

Sometimes happens that I lock the session and when I want to log back in, I can't actually click inside the password field to fill it in.
It happend when the display goes off while locked and not always. Given that I got locked out I don't know what else I can do to troubleshoot and provide more info.
BTW, I was able to use Alt+F1-6 to use other terminal and log in, just don't know what to check ATM. Also I was usually in a rush so I simply restarted and possibly lost some unsaved data.

[TomHejret]

It happedned right now. The login screen only reacts on pressing Caps and Num locks as it shows it is active. It does not react on mouse clicks, Tab or basically anything else.

[hanaral]

I may have possibly lost part of my university application to this

[TomHejret]

Possibly related thing is that when I got this locked out after wake, I tried to switch to another terminal (ctrl+alt+F1-7) and looked for Xorg session (ps -ef | grep xorg). I found one more than expected at tty8, which was about the same time old as PC was woke up. I could switch to that session by pressing (ctrl+alt+F8) and that session was locked exactly the same way without any possibility to fill in the password.
So I switched back to terminal where I found multiple Xorgs and killed the younger one (using sudo for that was needed). Then I switched back to originial session (ctrl+alt+F7 - tty7 is the default one) and now I was able to input password and also all my open applications remained as where I left them. Hope that helps!

[anhofmann]

I have the same symptom on my laptop except it always happens. So when I lock my session, or the laptop goes to sleep, I can no longer log into my session. The greeter does not show up. Instead, I see the icons in the upper right (power button, etc) and the rest of the screen is gray. I can see and move the mouse.

I have the two xorgs sessions, as does the author, when the Greeter is not displayed:

root 1446 1441 6 22:16 tty7 00:02:14 /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg -core :0 -seat seat0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch
root 6878 1441 4 22:52 tty8 00:00:02 /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg -core :1 -seat seat0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:1 -nolisten tcp vt8 -novtswitch

Sometimes it works that I kill the xorg process from the tty8 with kill 6878, but most of the time I only see the greeter for a split second and then the grey background again.

I get the following entries in the /var/log/lightdm/seat0-greeter.log when killing the second xorg process

(io.elementary.greeter:9784): Handy-WARNING **: 23:01:34.392: Failed to load icon: Error opening file "/home/user1/.face": File or directory not found
(io.elementary.greeter:9784): Handy-WARNING **: 23:01:34.392: Failed to load icon: Error opening file "/home/user2/.face": File or directory not found
** (io.elementary.greeter:9784): CRITICAL **: 23:01:34.501: MainWindow.vala:358: prompt: `Password: ' (1)
** (io.elementary.greeter:9784): CRITICAL **: 23:01:34.503: SettingsDaemon.vala:126: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Could not get PID of name ':1.480': no such name

Data from my system:
elementary OS 6.1 Jólnir
Linux 5.11.0-43-generic
Quad-Core Intel® Core™ i5-10210U CPU @ 1.60GHz
Intel® UHD Graphics (CML GT2)

I am very happy to provide more data, feel free to ask!

[anhofmann]

I also see lines like these when I call dmesg -Hw

[ +19,185654] traps: io.elementary.g[8257] general protection fault ip:7efccc1be160 sp:7fffd019d9c8 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7efccc190000+36000]
[Dez28 23:01] traps: io.elementary.g[8675] general protection fault ip:7fb667607160 sp:7fff59f4fdf8 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7fb6675d9000+36000]
[  +2,579165] traps: io.elementary.g[8794] general protection fault ip:7f266edbd160 sp:7ffc0e5494f8 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7f266ed8f000+36000]
[  +2,525926] io.elementary.g[8904]: segfault at 5 ip 00007f8b4b43211f sp 00007ffef70fd5e0 error 4 in libgtk-3.so.0.2404.16[7f8b4b1c0000+36f000]
[  +0,000009] Code: 56 41 55 41 54 55 53 48 85 ff 0f 84 db 00 00 00 48 89 fd 49 89 f4 41 89 d5 e8 2d fb ff ff 48 89 c6 48 8b 45 00 48 85 c0 74 05 <48> 39 30 74 10 48 89 ef e8 34 cb d9 ff 85 c0 0f 84 ac 00 00 00 4d
[  +2,447405] traps: io.elementary.g[9012] general protection fault ip:7f8a0a5b8160 sp:7ffe05240df8 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7f8a0a58a000+36000]
[  +2,573722] traps: io.elementary.g[9123] general protection fault ip:7f4e5be3d160 sp:7ffd5beb9758 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7f4e5be0f000+36000]
[  +2,427382] traps: io.elementary.g[9236] general protection fault ip:7f9346d25160 sp:7ffc8dd79da8 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7f9346cf7000+36000]
[  +2,546749] io.elementary.g[9348]: segfault at 5 ip 00007f9b305c911f sp 00007ffd39655f10 error 4 in libgtk-3.so.0.2404.16[7f9b30357000+36f000]
[  +0,000010] Code: 56 41 55 41 54 55 53 48 85 ff 0f 84 db 00 00 00 48 89 fd 49 89 f4 41 89 d5 e8 2d fb ff ff 48 89 c6 48 8b 45 00 48 85 c0 74 05 <48> 39 30 74 10 48 89 ef e8 34 cb d9 ff 85 c0 0f 84 ac 00 00 00 4d
[  +2,464710] traps: io.elementary.g[9458] general protection fault ip:7ff41d9e8160 sp:7ffe5f8ba108 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7ff41d9ba000+36000]
[  +2,527998] traps: io.elementary.g[9571] general protection fault ip:7fcc623d0160 sp:7ffec5abb668 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7fcc623a2000+36000]
[  +2,459923] traps: io.elementary.g[9679] general protection fault ip:7f835e981160 sp:7fffae860ae8 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7f835e953000+36000]
[  +2,512780] traps: io.elementary.g[9784] general protection fault ip:7ff9afe23160 sp:7ffcee0c7e38 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7ff9afdf5000+36000]
[  +2,523234] traps: io.elementary.g[9897] general protection fault ip:7f71f4dc6160 sp:7ffe1021a788 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7f71f4d98000+36000]
[  +2,543094] traps: io.elementary.g[10007] general protection fault ip:7f62f73ac160 sp:7fff9d08b238 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7f62f737e000+36000]
[  +8,559359] rfkill: input handler disabled

[peteruithoven]

@anhofmann did you ever find a solution?
I'm having the same issue, I see the greeter screen, with bar at the top with indicators, but no login window.

I think your symptoms don't really match this issue, as this is about the login window not responding. The following one is probably more of a match, that's also where I've been leaving more details.
#411

[paulmueller]

I am experiencing this with the latest 7.1 release and I find it quite frustrating. Did you discover a permanent workaround for this? @anhofmann @peteruithoven @TomHejret

I browsed through the issue list and this seems to be a common problem: #411 #439 #557 #565

[anhofmann]

Did you discover a permanent workaround for this? @anhofmann @peteruithoven @TomHejret

Sadly, I had to stop using elementary os because of this. I really wanted to like elementary, but I need a working system, that doesn't get in my way.

[peteruithoven]

It stopped happening for me.