Lost password

[Bob Nielsen]

Oops, this got sent before I was finished--

On Jan 14, 2006, at 6:38 PM, Bob Nielsen wrote:

>
> On Jan 14, 2006, at 5:10 PM, Douglas Alves wrote:
>
>> No doubt this has been discussed before, so please excuse my asking
>>
>> Having forgotten the password to my home ubuntu desktop, what options
>> would I have to recover my system?
>
>
> Boot with a live CD, mount the / partition and edit /etc/passwd,  
> changing your entry
>

If you don't have shadow installed, boot with a live CD, mount / and  
edit /etc/passwd, changing your entry to remove the text between the  
first two colons.  If shadow is installed do this to /etc/shadow  
instead.  If you don't have a live CD (or some sort of rescue CD) you  
can possibly do this with an installation CD by hitting F2 to get a  
prompt after the basics have been installed (hopefully including some  
sort of editor such as vi or nano).  I keep a copy of Tom's rtbt  
floppy around for such things.