When sudo Suddenly Ghosts You: A Quick Fix

Ever had sudo suddenly refuse to work, even though you know you're typing the right password? That just happened to me, and the cause was surprisingly silly.

The Symptom

Every sudo command kept responding with:

[sudo] password for user: 
Sorry, try again.
[sudo] password for user: 
Sorry, try again.
[sudo] password for user: 
sudo: 3 incorrect password attempts

And yes, I was absolutely certain I was typing it correctly!

The Culprit

Turns out I had mindlessly hit enter a few times during a yay -Syu system upgrade (you know, the way you do when you're impatient 😅). Those extra enters got buffered and when yay eventually asked for my sudo password, it interpreted those buffered enters as failed password attempts.

This triggered sudo's built-in security feature that temporarily locks your account after too many failed attempts.

The Fix

Thankfully, the solution is super simple. Just run:

faillock --reset

And you're back in business! If that doesn't work, you might need to run it as root:

su root
faillock --reset --user your-username

Pro Tips

• You can check your current faillock status with: faillock
• The default configuration for failed attempts is in /etc/security/faillock.conf
• If you're frequently hitting this issue, you might want to adjust the deny and unlock_time settings in that file