[ubuntu-us-nm] Password problem with Ubuntu 10.04

[David Einerson]

Mr Taylor,

In my own early days with Ubuntu, I had this exact problem. Many thanks 
to Eric Krieger for his assistance then, which I shall attempt to pay 
forward.

There may be extenuating circumstances that can complicate this, but 
give this process a try and we'll address any quirks if they come up:

During boot, immediately after BIOS post, hold down the shift (used to 
be the ESC) key, which, if timed well, will show you a text based set of 
boot options in a "grub" menu. The top two options will be the latest 
kernel installed on the system. The 2nd of those top two options will 
mention "Rescue Mode", which is what we're looking for. Booting into 
rescue mode, will soon lead to another, different text based menu with 
several options. One of the options near the bottom of that list is to 
boot in as root. If it gets all the way to a pound (#) prompt then you 
are almost done since you are then root. Then running passwd <username> 
will enable you to reset that user's passwd without having to know the 
current passwd. <username> should be replaced by the username created 
during installation.

It can be very difficult to get the SHIFT key pressed at just the right 
moment - especially on newer, faster machines, so that is likely going 
to be the hardest part. As long as /home was not encrypted during 
install, this process should get you going again. Note: There are 
numerous ways for this process to be prevented from working, but most 
Ubuntu users don't go through those steps until they have a specific 
reason for them.

On 04/10/2013 06:39 PM, Researcher Taylor wrote:
> Just re-installed and chose the option to not require password on 
> startup.  I didn't see the problem until I got an update notice.  I 
> typed the password and would not accept so I'm guessing that I 
> accidentally hit another character and did realize it until the update.
>
> Is there a workaround to change your user password without knowing the 
> old password?
>
> Thanks!
>
>

-- 
David Einerson
505-750-1878

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