The login counter (tallying) module

This module maintains a count of attempted accesses, can reset count on success, can deny access if too many attempts fail.

verify or check the counter that user attempts

# pam_tally2 -u USER

How to reset or unlock the user account to enable access again.

# pam_tally2 -u USER --reset

/etc/pam.d/password-auth

auth        required      pam_env.so
auth        required      pam_tally2.so deny=10

password    requisite     pam_cracklib.so try_first_pass retry=3 minlen=8 lcredit=-1 ucredit=-1 dcredit=-1 ocredit=0 enforce_for_root