I paused a video playing in mpv, then stepped away from the computer for a while, and it automatically locked the screen. After entering the password, pressing the Enter key produced no response. Clicking the button with the mouse also did nothing—only the button was flashing. Finally, I forced a shutdown using the physical power button and restarted the computer.
I had the same issue when updated kubuntu 24.04 to 25.10. Then forced shutdown and needed at least one more reboot to have everything working again.
After rebooting, I logged in. I’m posting this from the same computer.
Operating System: Fedora Linux 43
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.22.0
Qt Version: 6.10.1
Kernel Version: 6.18.7-200.fc43.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × Intel® Core™ i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz
Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (15.4 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor 1: Intel® UHD Graphics 630
Graphics Processor 2: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q Design
Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
Product Name: G3 3590
mpv v0.40.0 Copyright © 2000-2025 mpv/MPlayer/mplayer2 projects
libplacebo version: v7.351.0
FFmpeg version: 7.1.1 (runtime 7.1.2)
FFmpeg library versions:
libavcodec 61.19.101
libavdevice 61.3.100
libavfilter 10.4.100
libavformat 61.7.100
libavutil 59.39.100
libswresample 5.3.100
libswscale 8.3.100
The MPV player is in full-screen mode.
Oh, Firefox also opened a webpage with a video in the background, and the video was paused.(This is indicated in the video below the password field.)
Mozilla Firefox 147.0.2
Can you reproduce it now?
No(I have already executed sudo dnf update, so the environment may differ.)
Before encountering this issue, my screen had automatically locked many times before, and I was always able to unlock it normally. I’m puzzled as to why this particular instance caused a problem.
I think I have something similar which only happens very rarely. I can’t put my finger on the cause nor can I reproduce it. Whenever that happens, I am unable to resurrect the session and have to reboot. It just happened again today.
I have looked through a ton of successful unlocks and the following line never appears on any of them. I found two other occurrences in the last three months which sounds about right.
Mär 02 15:38:52 ppocket-thinkpad kscreenlocker_greet[123232]: [PAM worker kde] Authentication attempt too soon. This shouldn't happen!
This seems to be the issue. This is exactly where I think my lockscreen gets stuck. After that point, I can still control the lock screen. Escape will dismiss it to a black screen. I can put the laptop in sleep and in hibernate from the lock screen.
I can enter the password but pressing enter or the button does nothing. Can anyone point me to where I can dig further to maybe find more information about the causes of this?
My kinfo:
Operating System: Arch Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.6.1
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.23.0
Qt Version: 6.10.2
Kernel Version: 6.18.13-arch1-1 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 14 × Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 155U
Memory: 32 GB of RAM (30.8 GB usable)
Graphics Processor: Intel® Graphics
I am positive this happened on 6.5 as well.
Please report it at https://bugs.kde.org
Seems similar to: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=515299
A cleaner way would be to switch tty (ctrl+alt+F3) to the console, login, then kill the kscreenlocker_greet process. It will automatically respawn and should allow you to login.
There seems to be a bug already open about this and may benefit from your contribution: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=515299
Thank you. The issue occurred again today, but this time there were no browsers or video players running on the computer. I switched to the TTY and got this information:
Current system information:
Operating System: Fedora Linux 43
KDE Plasma Version: 6.6.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.24.0
Qt Version: 6.10.3
Kernel Version: 6.19.11-200.fc43.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × Intel® Core™ i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz
Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (15.4 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor 1: Intel® UHD Graphics 630
Graphics Processor 2: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q Design
Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
Product Name: G3 3590
I do run into this every few weeks, but I never could find out what was wrong so far.
Here’s a quick fix for when it happens:
- change tty and login
- run
loginctl list-sessions loginctl unlock-session 2(using the correct number from the previous command- change back to your graphical session and it should have been unlocked
Try switching off of sddm to plasma-login-manager, that seemed to fix my login issues.
Sorry, I can’t read that. The layout looks like its from journalctl? Was that on the TTY already when you switched to it or did you run a command? I think its being paged given the highlighted last line, which makes me think you ran a command but you haven’t not said so.
If you’re including command output, please paste the text instead of a photo. You can redirect the output of a command using a redirect as in journalctl > journalctl_2026_04_14.txt or similar.
I had or maybe still have the same issue, restarting SDDM service through tty fixes it. This could be linked to having multiple monitors, does your setup happen to include multiple monitors?
I wanted to provide some information, so I ran a command I found online:
journalctl -xe
I ran this command immediately after entering my password and clicking the “Invalid” unlock button, switching to tty mode to do so.
Sorry, I didn’t know how to copy text in TTY mode at the time, so I had to take a photo with my phone.
After I rebooted and booted into the system normally, I ran the command again but couldn’t find the same information as before.
No.
It’s just a laptop with an external keyboard and mouse connected, but no external monitor.
Did you try killing the kscreenlocker_greet process like I suggested?
This won’t fix the problem, but it should allow you to unlock the screen and get back in without hard resetting the pc.