[Ubuntu] Forgotten Username & Password

[tech_guy]

A friend has just phoned in a panic - he's got a works laptop with Vista & Ubuntu set up on it.

He's not used Ubuntu for some time and has forgotten the username and password that he set (he's only the technology director of an electronics company so you'd expect better, eh?!).

He's got some work files that he needs for Monday and thinks he created them in Ubuntu using Open Office.

Am I correct in saying to him all he needs to do is boot the laptop using an Ubuntu livecd and mount the hard drive and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to remove the password? I seem to remember doing this myself or something very similar some time back.

Many thanks.

(It's Saturday night and I've had too much JD to think straight).

[Jamman960]

Not too sure about changing the menu.lst file but he should at least be able to copy the files accross to a flash drive once booted into a live cd with the drive mounted.

[powdarrmonkey]

I doubt the password is on the bootloader, I expect it's the user account password in Ubuntu he's forgotten. Briefly, you need to:

1. boot from a live cd and mount the root filesystem. example, it's at /dev/hda1:
mkdir /mnt/tmp; mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/tmp
2. mount other filesystems into /mnt/tmp/... if required
3. chroot to the temporary filesystem and change his password
chroot /mnt/tmp; passwd <user>
4. exit the chroot, unmount filesystems and reboot

If you need it I'm in Warwickshire and available in the morning or evening, but not afternoon.

[tech_guy]

I doubt the password is on the bootloader, I expect it's the user account password in Ubuntu he's forgotten. Briefly, you need to:

1. boot from a live cd and mount the root filesystem. example, it's at /dev/hda1:
mkdir /mnt/tmp; mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/tmp
2. mount other filesystems into /mnt/tmp/... if required
3. chroot to the temporary filesystem and change his password
chroot /mnt/tmp; passwd <user>
4. exit the chroot, unmount filesystems and reboot

If you need it I'm in Warwickshire and available in the morning or evening, but not afternoon.

Thanks for that - he's coming over in the morning so we'll give it a try then. Thank you.

[box_l]

Give this a try too.

KON-BOOT - ULTIMATE WINDOWS/LINUX HACKING UTILITY :-)

It works very well.

BoX

[EduTech]

When i had someone forget a password on Unbuntu i did the following, rather then right it out here is a link i have just pulled.

How to reset your password in Ubuntu

James

[samba_man]

I've been in that situation before and did what EduTech said. Quite scary how easy it is really!

When i had someone forget a password on Unbuntu i did the following, rather then right it out here is a link i have just pulled.

How to reset your password in Ubuntu

James