Require password for users at login -- Mint 19 Cinnamon

[jpmahon]

I now have the strange problem that the users do not need their passwords at login but the root login requires a password.

My understanding was that in previous versions of Mint, the

/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

file was used to control this. I added this line:

autologin-user=false

but it had no effect.

I searched through the preference applications and played with "Show Manual Login" etc but nothing fixed the problem.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[smurphos]

That's odd.

Can you elaborate a little? Is this one machine with multiple users and they can login just buy selecting their user name and hitting enter?

[jpmahon]

Thanks for the reply.

You stated it correctly.

[JerryF]

Try creating a new, temporary user. Set a password for that user.

Then try logging in as the temporary user. Does it ask for a password?

[jpmahon]

Thanks for the suggestion. When I made new users (one an administrator, one a normal user) with the GUI app, I used the GUI app to also create the passwords. For these new users, the login works properly i.e. it asks for a password. So great progress!! Thanks.

For the two users, for which the login does not work properly, I did not create the users this way. I followed these steps:

1) I used the GUI to create the users.
2) I used the terminal command "passwd" to create the passwords
3) I used a terminal command to add them to the administrator group.

Presently, I don't have access to the machine. So I cannot try to reproduce the problem. I will try to do so as soon as the machine comes back.

Thanks for your help
John

[JerryF]

Check to see if the two users "for which the login does not work properly" are in the nopwdlogin (not sure of the spelling) group. If they are, that may be why those two users don't need to enter their password.

[jpmahon]

I now understand the problem:

When adding a new user via the "Users and Groups" app, the default groups assigned to the user are the user's own group and "nopasswdlogin".

Then if the user sets his/her own password via the passwd command, the user remains in the "nopasswdlogin" group. Also if an administrator changes the user's password, the user remains in the "nopasswdlogin" group.

But when the "Users and Groups" app is used to assign the password, the user is taken out of the "nopasswdlogin" group.

Has this difference between the app and command always been there?

Thanks
John

[JerryF]

I don't know if the difference has always been there. Someone with more experience may be able to answer that question.

My suggestion of checking the nopasswdlogin group was an educated hunch.