No authentication password

[evona]

Dear all,

I have Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS (Lubuntu) which was installed in a PC repair shop.

When I asked for the authentication password, I was told that I do not need one.
However, I cannot update, install or change anything on my laptop without this password.

I tried to change it by accessing GRUB but my keyboard did not work properly (hitting Ctrl+C and F12 did not help).

I am not very comfortable with the command line. Please, could you provide me with a step-by-step guide how to fix this problem (if it can be fixed)?

Any help in this matter will be greatly appreciated,

Frustrated user

[ubfan1]

Normally, a user has a login password, and that password is what is used to run commands with sudo as root. Do you have a user password (it is possible to set things up without)? Did you try to run your
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
commands with sudo?
If you give the password, and sudo claims you are not allowed to use sudo, you have to add your user to the /etc/sudoers file.

[PaulW2U]

When I asked for the authentication password, I was told that I do not need one.
However, I cannot update, install or change anything on my laptop without this password.

I tried to change it by accessing GRUB but my keyboard did not work properly (hitting Ctrl+C and F12 did not help).

I can't find the guide that I used last week when I decided to use a different password while testing Ubuntu and then immediately forgot what it was. :)

Does the guide at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LostPassword help or have you already tried something like that? It's not too clear how far you got in your attempt to rectify the situation but pressing SHIFT while booting up should display the grub menu that you need to access to start the process which will only take you a couple of minutes.

[evona]

Dear PaulW2U,

Thank you for your response.
I have tried to follow this guide, however, once I am in a "rescue mode" my keyboard does not work.
I managed to get to root@user, but at this point I cannot type the command. When I am trying to type, the keys do not work or display completely different symbols.

Regards

[evona]

Dear ubfan1,

Thank you for your response.
I do not have a login password or any other kid of password.
I have tried to use the "sudo apt-get update" but then I am asked for the user password.
When I tried to add a new user in the User settings, it also asked me for the authentication password.

[ubfan1]

Maybe the lack of a password is confusing things. Just set a password on your account, and see if that fixes things. The command to change/set passwords is:
passwd
and you should be able to change it without sudo.
If sudo still doesn't work with a password, complaining about user not in the sudoers file, then that can be fixed by editing the /etc/sudoers file (booting from an install media, mounting the root, and editing the file). But wait to see if that's even necessary.