username and password - asked before but real newbie needing help

basically you need a user name and password of a existing account to do anything with it.

if you can't get a username and password to boot the machine.

2nd step download a live Linux distro. ubuntu will do fine or knoppix

boot from cd, the use that live distro to read files from the ubuntu hard drive.

3rd it looks a bit suss that you have purchased a business but they haven't given you access to the computers.....

Hello !

In recovery mode, you should have the proper rights.

If you now the username you want to reset the password, just type "passwd USERNAME", where USERNAME is the correct username. (no quotes needed)

For example : if my username is bmalet and I forgot my password, I log in in recovery mode and type "passwd bmalet" (without the quotes).

Creating a user is a bit longer, so I won't describe it if you don't need it ... Please post back if required.

Hope this helps !

Regards,
Benoît

When the computer boots there should be a short while when "GRUB Loading..." is displayed. Press escape there, recovery mode and press enter.

After a few seconds this should leave you with a command prompt ("root@xxx>"). Type passwd, enter. Now it should ask you for a new password ("New unix password:"). Type twice the same password.

If this doesn't work (may be disabled), you'll have to use live cd (available for download from the main site). With this you don't even need to change any passwords, you can access your files under the system booted from the cd.

People tend to put variable things in <> or write them in italics when available, so if there's <username> somewhere you should replace it with your username.

liquidation - and the guy i'm dealing with it is not a tech guy - the tech jumped ship along time before it headed southbound so i'm essentially dealing with a salesman - yep its fun :)

any pointer as to the location/links to the distribution files? - i presume i have to burn a iso to disc and boot from that?

thanks for advice on steps 1 and 2

step 3 can't help the situation there :(

umm - i have done that and changed the passwd for a user i knew worked there and that seemed to work - in that it updated the passwd or so it said

it didnt work however on the login screen when it came to typing it in

i have gone to recovery mode now and rather than arriving at root@xxx> as WRWRWR mentions i now get give root password fo maintenance or type Control-d to continue which loads up the login screen

stuck!!

advice please

Unless you know the root password you'll probably need some bootable cd.

Username is also called login, you need to use matching login and password to log in.

Maybe you've just changed the root (administrator) password?

You can find images ready to burn here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

You can order a ready cd, but it will take some time to arrive.

Please, be careful not to overwrite your critical files with a new ubuntu or windows installation (or reformatting). Back them up running the live cd (to some external medium, usb stick, floppies, spare harddrive).

downloading the install now - obviously crap download speed as everyones hitting the net before they go home :)

is there anything obvious i need to do when launching the cd or will it just run straight from it?

in answer to your previous post - yeah the user name it finally recognised when I changed the password is what i put in the login user name box - but didn't recognise the password i typed in - and i had to do it twice so no mistypes!!??

shame as it looks really good from the login screen :)

will post more once this download arrives

thanks all for help so far

Should just run from the cd, provided that your bios is set to booting from cd before the hard drive.

Then you select "Start or install..." and this will give you working desktop, to actually install you click install icon. But that shouldn't be necessary at all.

About this password changing, best do as Benoit advised, that is passwd and a login after a space, so you'll be sure for what login you're changing the password.

If you don't know any existing login try adding a new user: "adduser <new login>", at the console, without quotes, and with <new login> replaced with whatever login you'd like. This will prompt you for the password.

I have tried everything to get to sign on my username comes up but my password no matter what I do does not allow me to login - I am really frustuated, can I just remove from my system and go back to WP XP at least I could log on and change my password. Please help me sign on my computer

Sheila, you're not the same person as odobo? ;) Could you please make a new question about that, your problem may be different. Best give some more details on what are you trying to do and what happens.

If you have windows cd and don't mind losing anything you did under ubuntu, you can just forget about it and install windows.

This has just happened to me after an apt-get update on a system I have been using every day for 2 years. I have always been able to resolve issues before from a shell and using sudo (ubuntu recommended), but this one is proving a real problem. I cannot get past the login screen using passwords that have worked every day until now, and I can not get into a recovery mode root shell because it asks for a password for a user (root) that has never been enabled (ubuntu default).
I am downloading a Live CD at the moment so will try that and let you know if I have any success.

I think I solved it, or at least workrd around it for now!
I used a live CD in normal fashion, mounted the hard disk to a temp directory, then chrooted to the temp directory. I could then set a root passwd. End of Live CD
I searched around a few config files which all looked ok but it still didn't work. Obviously the problem seemed to be to do with gdm and authorisation so I edited /etc/pam.d/common-auth and commented out the fallback line which was set to pam_deny.so
I am working again now, it seems, the only thing that seems still wrong is my sudo password which is now the root password I set up rather than my login pasword. Onward & upward.