Ubuntu Password Problem

[Karl Auer]

On Sat, 2008-08-23 at 16:59 -0700, mrcy at military.com wrote:
> The password box would not accept my password, or any word I tried to
> use. I went to some existing help sites, both sponsered by you and
> some not, but none of them had any specific information. I tried a few
> ideas possed by some sites but to no avail.

During the actual install, you would have been asked for your name and a
username, and a password for that username. Your name and your username
are two different things - my name is, for example, "Karl Auer". My
username is "kauer". The login box wants your username, not your real
name.

At login, you get TWO boxes, one for the username and one for the
password. Type the username you selected during install into the
username box and press enter; then you'll see a password box and can
type in your password and press enter. Remember that both the username
and the password are case sensitive, so uppercase letters and lowercase
letters are *different*. If your username is (say) "MRCY". then "mrcy"
won't work. Make sure caps lock is off :-)

If all this doesn't work (or you just can't remember the username or
password), you'll have to do it the hard way. There are two hard ways.
The first (and simplest, but it takes a while) is just reinstall the
whole thing, paying close attention to the username and password you set
up.

The second, and faster-but-not-quite-so-simple method, is to start
Ubuntu in single user mode. To do this, reboot. The instant the "GRUB"
message appears at top left of your screen, hit "ESC". You only have
about a second, so be quick! If you miss it, just reboot and try again.

You'll know it's worked if you see a short menu of kernels you can boot.
The second one will say "(recovery mode)". Press the up- and down-arrows
until the recovery mode entry is highlighted, then press enter. A
*bunch* of cryptic stuff will flow past, but after a while you will be
looking at a root prompt (a prompt ending in "#").

Type this at the prompt and press enter:

   cat /etc/passwd

In the last few lines of the result you should see your username. If you
don't see it, reboot and reinstall Ubuntu.

If you do see your username and have an "aha" moment (i.e., realise you
were using the wrong username), just reboot and use the right username
to log in with. To boot, just type "exit" at the root prompt and press
enter; the system will proceed through a normal boot. 

If you see the username you were using and it is what you expected, then
you'll need to set up a new password. If the username is, for example,
"mrcy", type this and press enter:

   passwd mrcy

You'll be prompted to enter a new password for the user "mrcy". You may
have to put the password in twice, pressing enter after each time. Now
reboot and log in using the password you just set. To boot, just type
"exit" and press enter at the root prompt; the system will proceed
through a normal boot.

See how you go. Let us know if you are still having problems.

Regards, K.

PS: A good username is fairly short, all lowercase, and contains no
spaces or punctuation, just letters.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)

GPG fingerprint: DD23 0DF3 2260 3060 7FEC 5CA8 1AF6 D9E3 CFEE 6B28
Public key at  : random.sks.keyserver.penguin.de

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