I'm using Arch Linux and ran `sudo pacman -S protontricks` in Konsole. When sudo prompted for my password, the terminal appeared completely unresponsive: no characters or asterisks showed up, and I wasn't sure whether my keystrokes were being entered. After several attempts, the command eventually worked, so I realized I had probably been entering the password incorrectly. Is this normal, and can password input be configured to show feedback?
3 Answers
That behavior is normal. Terminal programs intentionally show nothing while you type a sudo password—not even asterisks—so someone watching your screen can’t determine how many characters it contains. Just type the password normally and press Enter.
There may also be temporary authentication lockouts after too many failed attempts, depending on your PAM setup. If the correct password still fails after repeated attempts, wait for the lockout period to expire or check your system’s account-lockout configuration.
If you prefer visual feedback, sudo can be configured to display an asterisk for each character. On Arch, you can create a sudoers configuration file with `Defaults pwfeedback`, for example: `echo -e "Defaults pwfeedback" | sudo tee /etc/sudoers.d/pwfeedback` and then run `sudo chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.d/pwfeedback`. Be careful when editing sudo configuration, since a syntax error can prevent sudo from working.
That explains it. I was assuming the terminal wasn’t accepting input, which caused me to mistype the password several times.