Change Password... does not work with a leading $!

[Joseph Watts]

Raspberry Pi 3, Raspian version 9 Stretch

In the Raspberry Pi Configuration window the "Change Password..." button does not work properly if the password begins with a $!.

After some testing I have determined that if a password is input into the GUI that begins with $! upon logging out only the part of the password after those characters is stored. If you change your password to $!password then on the login screen you have to type password instead.

If you go into the CLI and use the passwd command it will retain a leading $!. The login GUI works properly with a $! starting password so I expect the issue to be in the "Change Password..." process and not the login process.

Doing this will cause the user to be unable to login to their device with the password they expect. I had to reflash my OS a dozen or so times while trying to determine what was happening.

[Pander (pander)]

Can someone reproduce this in buster, please?

[Madison Jensen (mjensen21)]

Have you tried changing your keyboard layout? Since the Raspberry Pi was made in Britain, the default keyboard is also British. This throws off many American keyboard layouts. When trying to configure my Wifi I ran into the issue as well, but with @ signs. I had to reconfigure the keyboard settings, but since then have had no issues with special characters. I was using Buster Lite, and it has been functional since. I do not know if this is the same as your issue, but it might be worth taking a look at.