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I'm having a bizarre issue right now where in terminal (any terminal app does this) when entering sudo foo the time to enter my password is only about 2 or 3 seconds, which makes it nearly impossible to type my password without copy pasting it. It looks like this:

sudo foo
[sudo] password for mirli:
ExamplePaSorry, try again.
[sudo] password for mirli:
ExamplSorry, try again.
[sudo] password for mirli:

I have not heard of anyone else having this issue, ever, and my friend who uses Arch (BTW) has not either. It seems to be a wholly unique issue. I have installed Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS; really, any distro that stems from Ubuntu seems to have this issue and it has persisted through repeated reinstalls.

I suspect this may be due to some sort of input issue, as the cursor blinks when awaiting my password, but does not accept any input from my keyboard, only enter, which causes me to have until the sudo task processes to enter my password on the next line.

I am new to Linux so please simply ask if you need me to do anything specific in the terminal and I'll try to get the results to you accurately.

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    Which version of Ubuntu? I just tested on a Docker container of 24.04 and it didn't time out even after a full minute. Are you installing some program which sends keyboard signals, like Caffeine? Tried a different keyboard?
    – muru
    Commented yesterday
  • 1
    I’ve never had a timeout in the terminal - sudo commands just hang until I put my password in (unless I recently entered a sudo command and put the password in - in which case the command is immediately executed). As muru says, is something sending an ‘enter’ to the terminal?
    – Will
    Commented yesterday
  • @muru I'm using 24.04 Noble as well. It does this even after a fresh install with no additional programs added beyond what is installed by default. To clarify the behavior, when entering a sudo command, the [sudo] password for mirli: will hang until I press any key. At which point I can start entering the password, which gives me about a 3 second window to enter, until it cuts me off and tells me I have an incorrect password. I have not tried a different keyboard, since I only have one, but as far as I know I haven't had issues with sending errant "enter" keystrokes before.
    – blalo'u
    Commented yesterday
  • Actually, after some experimentation I may have stumbled upon part of the issue. When waiting for my password, the cursor blinks, which means it's awaiting input. But it will not accept any input, apart from enter, which means I have until sudo processes its command to enter my password.
    – blalo'u
    Commented yesterday
  • 1
    How do you know it's not accepting input? Not accepting input is not the same as not showing it on the screen
    – muru
    Commented yesterday

1 Answer 1

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-3

This is solved: a duplicate of Nothing shows up in the terminal when I type my password

You are in fact typing your password when it asks for it in the sudo prompt, it just does not show any feedback for security reasons.

I was not aware of the blanking behavior, rather than asterisk blanking (e.g. ****). This may be something to communicate better to newer users.

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