Well now I’ve done it. Went to boot and log in to the Intel MBAir I want to partition and use for Linux. Hadn’t logged in for a long time, typed the login from my notes, it wasn’t accepted and I was immediately locked out for 5 minutes. Unexpected Nr. 1, as I thought more attempts to correct the possible typo would be allowed.
Within 5 minutes while I was looking at my notes again, the Mac shut down, UN2.
Booted again and was asked for a Recovery Key. I carefully typed the Filevault reocvery key listed in my notes, the interface kindly adding the dashes, but it was not accepted, UN3.
Booted again and instead logged in to a 2nd account successfully. Tried to switch users, entered again carefully the password but then I was told I’m locked out for 24 hours, UN4.
The MBA is probably on Mac OS Sierra so I can use some older software, has worked fine in the past. I wanted to check some stats on it to prepare to set it up for dual booting in Linux but now that’s deferred. There is data on the failed account I want to save/backup so I’ll have to figure out why it wasn’t accepting either correct pw or FV Recovery Key.
So… for a MBAir that hasn’t been logged into for some weeks (well maybe months for the failed account, probably weeks for the one that worked), is all this normal, expected behavior? I thought I’d get more chances to type correctly or change software keyboard. Now I have to research how to reset the account password when it again lets me.