[STICKY] How to Reset a Forgotten Password

By default the first user's account is an administrative account, so if the UI is prompting you for a password it's probably that person's user password. If the user doesn't remember their password you need to reset it. To do this you need to boot into recovery mode.

Boot up the machine, and after the BIOS screen, hold down the left Shift key. You will then be prompted by a menu that looks something like this:

[Screenshot of the GRUB2 Menu]

(In my computers, GRUB2 will open this menu by default and give you five seconds to respond)

Select "recovery mode" boot option

Scroll down the list to the "root - drop to root shell prompt" option (or netroot, but it doesn't matter)

You should now see a root prompt, something like this:

Code:

root@ubuntu:~#

At this stage it is possible you have a read-only filesystem. You have to remount it with write permissions:

Code:

mount -rw -o remount /

Once you're at the root shell prompt, if you have forgotten your username as well, type

Code:

ls /home (small letters & not capitals).

This will list all the user accounts in your set up.

Now we can set the user's password with the "passwd" command. (In this example I will use jorge as the example, you need to substitute whatever the user's username is):

Code:

passwd jorge (username is "jorge")
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
root@ubuntu:~#

Type in what you want the new password to be at the prompt. After it's successful reboot the machine and the user will be able to log in with their new password.