[ubuntu-uk] Password recovery

[Jason Liquorish]

Keith wrote:
> I've managed to get myself into a bit of a pickle and would appreciate 
> any help.
> 
> I have a non-Windows machine with two separate hard drives.  Ubuntu is 
> on one and Kubuntu on the other,  They are both partitioned with home 
> directories on a separate partition.  There is an additional user on 
> each distro.
> 
> On Friday a problem arose with the Kubuntu distribution which I couldn't 
> resolve myself, so I decided to install v. 8.04.01, especially as it now 
> included KDE 4.  All seemed to be OK until I tried to boot up Ubuntu 
> which stalled and needed a CTRL-D to get to the desktop.  Not to worry, 
> I thought, I'll reinstall with 8.04.1 which proceeded normally. 
> However, when the other user tried to log in, Ubuntu would not accept 
> the password.  I googled extensively but the only remedy I could find 
> was to recover my own password, which was not applicable here and didn't 
> help recover, or change, the password in question.  I even tried to 
> "re-add" the second user but Ubuntu told me that the user already 
> existed, etc.
> 
> So I'm stumped and if anyone can help me resolve the problem, I shall be 
> very pleased.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Keith.
> 
> 
> ---
> Keith Bowerman,
> Prestwood, south Staffs, England.
> Using Ubuntu 8.04 on a Linux only machine
> 
> 
> 
If you boot to the recovery console then you have full root access. from 
here you can run "passwd <username>" to change the password of that 
user. I have had this problem before and it was worrying to find out how 
easy it was to do this, although if someone has physical access to your 
computer its as good as compromised anyway.

Hope this helps =)

-- 
Jason Liquorish