Ubuntu Password

Hello Guys,

Is there anyway to force a password reset. Its been so long since I used it on the machine I am retrofitting, I forgot it. Hopefully I dont have to start over and re-install from the start.

Thanks Rick

At grub menu select the apprpriate line and press e
Then edit the kernel line to finsh 'ro single' instead of 'ro quiet splash'

Now press either b or F10 depending on grub version and you will boot into aroot shell

Then enter 'passwd Rick'
Supply the new password twice when asked and then finally
'passwd -u Rick'

Then reboot and use new password

regards

Hello Arceye,

To enter grub, I hold the "shift" key while the computer is booting correct?

I have never used the grub menu.


Thanks

Hi

Sorry, time zone mismatch, just got up again.

Yes hold down shift, if that does not work try pressing Esc when you see the fleeting GRUB boot message.
If still does not work, use a PS/2 keyboard or try enabling 'legacy USB' in BIOS

You may already have what I described set up under a 'recovery' option, read the kernel line to see if it ends 'ro single'

This describes more fully the methods I mentioned
www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/reset-your...n-2-minutes-or-less/

regards

No problem,

I cannot get this thing to get to the grub menu.

I start the PC and after I see the bios boot screen, I have hit shift, esc, del and nothing works. I went into the BIOs and made sure legacy usb was enabled and it was, I tried a usb keyboard, I started with a regular keyboard with the round connector. ( not sure if thats what you meant by PS/2).

I have tried all of this on 2 different ubuntu machines I have setup for linux, other than the problem pc and I cannot get it to do it on any of them. I'm obviously missing the boat somewhere, not sure where though.

Is there any other way to get there? I saw on that website you sent me how to do it from the command line, problem is I have to use "sudo" to do it, worthless without my password.

Thanks Again

Rick

---

I was able to get it figured out, I found this info on the ubuntu website.

If you can't get into recovery mode , grab a live CD, boot from that, and select "try Ubuntu". Mount the local hard drive and reset your password. When it boots open a terminal window and the command lines would be,

sudo mkdir /media/disk
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/disk
sudo chroot /media/disk
passwd "username" ( enter your username )
(enter your new password)
(repeat new password)
exit
sudo umount /media/disk

Close the terminal
Then remove the cd and restart the computer.
Should be good to go then.


Thanks for the help Arceye.

Below more for future info of anyone with same problem than anything else

Is there any other way to get there? I saw on that website you sent me how to do it from the command line, problem is I have to use "sudo" to do it, worthless without my password.

You can do it from the Live CD and chroot into the mounted volume as per your post

There is no problem using this method, you are sudo-ing from the Live CD not your system on the computer.

The other method if all else fails is to install a minimal installation of Ubuntu onto another partition (create one if necessary by shrinking your existing one to free some space - about 6GB to be safe)
This will reinstall GRUB and because there are now 2 operating systems, will put the GRUB menu as visible in the conf file so you will be able to access it.

Afterwards you can delete this partition and return space to your existing volume, just be aware that if you run grub-update afterwards you will probably lose the GRUB menu again, because there is only one OS detected.

But use the chroot method if you can. I have used it many times, the only proviso is that you must use a Live CD for the same version and instruction set type as the installed system.
eg you cannot use this method to try and access and change a 10.04 i386 system from a 12.04 x86_64 Live CD

regards