Cannot unlock screen from the lock

[Bryn M. Reeves]

On 02/06/2013 11:04 AM, Jean Jacques wrote:
>
> Has any one encountered the problem that the screen cannot back from
> lock? The new lock screen does not unlock after the password has been
> entered.
>
>

I've seen similar behaviour in a few situations: when the load on the 
box is extremely high it may take minutes (or tens of minutes if 
severely stressed) for the authentication to complete. I've seen this 
with runaway browsers and other processes chewing memory and CPU time. 
Typically in this case the password dialog is also slow to appear and 
the cursor may be laggy and unresponsive.

The other one that comes to mind is a problem with authentication itself 
- if using network auth then a problem with the network or backend 
service may cause unlock delays. This should be less of a problem with 
local authentication.

Finally, you might have a deadlock or task blocked on IO - for e.g. a 
kernel or driver bug or some storage device. I've seen this with file 
system bugs for e.g. when some IO never completes.

Depending on where things are stuck you may be able to switch to a 
virtual terminal, log in, and debug from there.

Regards,
Bryn.