Password access to Debian

After quite a struggle getting the iso on BOTH a DVD and a USB flash, I've managed to get Linux up on my PC. Started configuring the files and decided to give it a rest. So, I logged out. Now, I am unable to log back in for want of a username and password....which I have NEVER entered. Any suggestions would be appreciated

You can boot into single user mode and change the password.

See the EDIT BOOT OPTIONS here: serverfault.com/questions/482079/debian-...-to-single-user-mode

Basically: Highlight the image you boot into, press E to edit it. Tehre is usually an option line with "ro quiet splash" you need to add single on this line.

This will allow you to boot to a CLI in the shell, where you can use passwd to change the password.

passwd by itself will change the password of the root user in this case.

If you want to change passwords for other user accounts, you can cat /etc/passwd and that will show you all the accounts in the format user1:somepasswordhash,userid,groupid, etc....There are some built-in accounts for various reasons, don't mess with them.

In that case, you could passwd user1 to change the password for user1.

Type reboot when you are done and come in normally.

Good luck.

Thanks for the response but I must not have made myself clear...I am presently booting from a USB Flash drive...this is my first access. Somehow, somewhere a userid and a password MUST have gotten onto the download when I downloaded the iso, because I have never even gotten to a screen where I could enter such information. So, when I try to configure my setup and end the session, I cannot get back to where I left off. In addition to that, when I have failed the "log-in" and try to just quit, I keep getting sent back to the login screen...even when I hit logoff...Any Ideas?? thanks,brooks

did you use the linuxcnc iso live cd ?
or some other distribution .

this sounds as if your still running as a live cd , rather than an install
are you dual booting ?

Well, thanks for asking...perhaps I'd better start from the beginning of this episode...I'll try to be brief.
My DSL is quite a joke. It took near 6 hours to download the iso. I did that twice before I got a good download according to the MD5SUM. Once I got that I burned a DVD and then tried to boot from it. Failed, was only able to boot MS Windows after numerous attempts to modify the boot BIOS. OK, so I decided to burn a USB Flash drive copy from the same iso....which I did. Now, I can boot from that Flash Drive...I get to a screen that resembles the weather mans depiction of a hurricane in the center with rather common desktop icons and a pulldown "Applications Menu" in the upper L corner. Problem is, when I decide to try to logout and/or shutdown, I get sent back to a small screen where it asks for a userid and then a password...neither of which have I ever been prompted to enter. BTW, I'm responding to you on my laptop, but the PC that I'm actually loading is a desktop that hopefully one day will be a dedicated driver for my mill....thanks,brooks

WAIT!!! I may have just stumbled onto it....the very 1st screen is an opportunity to use 'live' or 'install'....I've been blindly clicking the 'live' option...I think you nailed it....thanks so much, brooks

Well, I'm not too sure there was progress associated with that...immediately after the reboot i've crashed,burned, & died into something called 'grub rescue'....any ideas with that??

Thanks to all who responded...I finally punted and re-installed from the 'fail-safe' option and presto Linux is up and running...Now, all I have to do is finish the mill retrofit....and start to learn something of how to actually USE the software....brooks

Congratulations. I did assume you were already installed so therefore the password recovery method.

Now that you have it working, I will save you your first couple hours of non-obvious troubleshooting in 2.7.0 once you start spinning motors:

The tool table comes with a 0.5110 offset by default for tool 1. This is a nice feature to have some arbitrary value distributed in a clean install moving your tool path to unexpected locations.
linuxcnc.org/docs/html/gcode/tool_compen....html#sec:tool-table

Thanks!! I am such a novice at this. The challenge of converting the mill, an electronics mountain rivaled by Everest, and learning Linuxcnc, is quite a task. It seems that the development of the software has occurred over such an extended period of time that the documentation has fallen woefully behind to the extent that someone like me can't even find a starting place....You know the joke about the alligators and the swamp....all I wanted to do is make a few chips...I'm pretty sure that what I was able to get installed is 2.6.4....which is just fine for my purposes....thanks again for the tip,brooks