Password failure

[CowDoctor]

I don't know if this is hardware or software, but my laptop has suddenly stopped recognizing my password. I have no idea what to do. Help, please, if there is any.

[Bashing-om]

CowDoctor -

If you do not care to troubleshoot for the cause - \A quick means to get back in business is to set a new password.
Easy Tutorial:
www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/resetpassword

-hope this helps-

[yancek]

Which version and release of Ubuntu are you using? Do you get an error such as authentication failed or some other error? Does this happen immediately on boot when you try to login or at some other point?

[CowDoctor]

Thank you! Bashing-om. Of course, it's not quite so easy. When I enter the passwd username command I get a list of options. The two that seem they might be relevant are: -r reset password in REPOSITORY repository or -u unlock the password in the named account. I am being extra cautious about making a mistake in root.
Yours gratefully,
Joe the cow doctor.
PS I am running 24.04 and the error shows up immediately when I turn on the machine and am prompted to enter the password.

[ajgreeny]

Can we check that you have no encrypted partition in your system as you should not have that problem.
Can you also confirm that once you had booted to Recovery Mode you ran the command

mount -o rw,remount /

to remount the filesystem as read/write. If you omitted tha command nothing you do will make the changes needed.

[CowDoctor]

Yes, I did run that command. It did not give me any error message, just returned me to the command line.

[CowDoctor]

There should not be any encrypted partition. I have never run anything but the Ubuntu that came on the machine when I purchased it from System 76, just regular upgrades

[yancek]

[QUOTE] Yes, I did run that command. It did not give me any error message/QUOTE]

That means the command you ran was successful as it would output an error if it were not. Have you tried resetting the password per the instructions in post 2?

Had you been using this computer and Ubuntu regularly before this problem occurred and had any changes been made just prior to the problem?

[CowDoctor]

I can't copy and paste the commands and responses, but I'll try to replicate.
PressEnter for maintenance
(or press Control-D to continue):
root@Bucky:~# mount -o rw,remount /
root@Bucky:~# passwd Joseph Snyder
Usage: passwd [options] [LOGIN]

Options:
-a, --all report password status on all accounts
-d --delete delete the password for the named account
-e -- expire. force expire the password for the named account
-h --help display this help message and exit
-k -- keep tokens. change password only if required
-i -- inactive INACTIVE. set password to inactive after expiration to INACTIVE
-l lock -- lock the password of the named account
-n -- mindays MIN_DAYS set minimum number of days before password change to MIN_DAYS
-q -- quiet. quiet mode
-r -- repository REPOSITORY. change password in REPOSITORY repository
-R -- root CHROOT_DIR. directory to chroot into
-S -- status. report password status in the named account
-u -- unlock. unlock the password of the named account
-w --warndays WARN_DAYS. set expiration warning days to WARN_DAYS
-x maxdays MAX_DAYS. set maximum number of days before password change to MAX_DAYS
root@Bucky~#

[CowDoctor]

I don't think there are any typos, but it at least should be close. Bucky is the name of the computer.