I’m running Artix Linux for many years without problems. Since a while, the system clock would lag behind between boots. I thought the CMOS battery was dead so I just synced the time with ntpd every time.
Just recently my bios password was gone all of the sudden! I didn’t disable it at all. It just boots into Linux without asking for the password. I got the message “account [account name] has password changed in the future”. My login password has not changed and I didn’t attempt to change it.
Just now it took a few tries before booting which spooked my out. The bios password still gone and the same message upon login. All of the sudden the date is set to 2018-01-01 (usually it is just a few hours behind).
Is my motherboard just dying? If the bios password can just disappear it doesn’t provide much security lol.
Bios passwords dont provide security at all. At most, mild theft prevention (that is trivially bypassed). If you want security, disk encryption is what you want.
Replace your CMOS battery, NTP is good to, but you really don’t want your CMOS freaking out.
I’ll make sure to replace the CMOS and use disk encryption next time. My sensitive data is encrypted separately so I’ll be fine for now. I thought that with a bios password someone couldn’t just boot from a USB on my system but clearly it only delays such actions by a minute or two.
the last time i tried to do this (approximately 10 years ago) the cmos was soldered onto the motherboard.
I have replaced it and it just clipped in and out of a round little thing it sits in. I happened to have the right battery on hand.
Yeah, it prevents booting on that motherboard, but they can just yank your disks and boot it on another motherboard.
Normally, a good bios password implementation shouldn’t reset with CMOS battery, but for yours it seems it does.