HOWTO: Change your forgotten password

[majikstreet]

What?! You forgot your password? What are you going to do now? You can't reinstall; you have all your critical files on your machine!

No big deal. Don't sweat it. We can change your password so easily it's not even funny.

The Howto:
1. Boot up your computer, and when you see the screen that says something like "Press ESC to enter grub," press ESC (the escape key) as soon as you can.

2. Now you should see a menu with many options. Use the arrow keys to navigate to the newest kernel (the one with the highest number) that has "(recovery mode)" written next to it. Now, hit enter (return).

3. Next, your system should boot up normally. BUT, you WILL NOT see the boot splash. Don't worry about that. Lots and lots of text WILL fly past you.

4. Now you are at a root shell.

5. Type

passwd username

replacing username with your username

6. Now a little thing will come up and say "New UNIX Password" or similar. Type the new password that you want. Hit enter. Type it again. Hit enter

7. Then, your password has been changed! Type

shutdown -r now

8. Your system is now rebooting. Once it comes back up, login with your new username and password.

9. There is no step nine.


That was easy, too easy. Congratulations!

Hope to help,
majikstreet

[welsh_spud]

My God! That's just plain scary...


...but it will come in useful. Thanks majikstreet

[majikstreet]

yeah, it's really scary..

but it's a great feature..

That's why you should physically secure a computer that has sensitive/important stuff on it, folks.

[bored2k]

Originally Posted by welsh_spud My God! That's just plain scary... ...but it will come in useful. Thanks majikstreet

That's why people set up passwords for GRUB.

[welsh_spud]

I remember something like this on the old Apple iBooks. When they were booting up you could hold down ctrl-c and it would drop you into a root shell, letting you do whatever you want to the computer.

[Iandefor]

Interesting. Thanks, majik.

[majikstreet]

Originally Posted by Iandefor Interesting. Thanks, majik.

no problem

[cronholio]

It seems scary. However, the logic behind that is: If someone has physical excess to a computer, they have access to your data anyway (and be it by means of taking along the HD). UN*X was built when people used to login remotely.

[imagine]

It's not about Unix, this works in every OS, also Windows.
If you need to secure your data against people who have physical access to it, encryption is your friend.


Btw, "reboot" is shorter than "shutdown -r now". Just for the people who are really lazy.

[majikstreet]

Originally Posted by imagine It's not about Unix, this works in every OS, also Windows. If you need to secure your data against people who have physical access to it, encryption is your friend. Btw, "reboot" is shorter than "shutdown -r now". Just for the people who are really lazy.

I know that reboot is shorter.. For some reason I felt like putting shutdown -r now

dvarsam thanks

A lesson to all: if you have valuble data on your machine, always encrypt and physically secure your machine. That is all.