Forgotten my password

You can boot the live cd and mount your root partition from there. After that, sudo -i to get a root shell and chroot to the directory you just mounted. Then you can run passwd to update the username. Here's an example:

1. I make a directory and mount my partition (happens to be sda5) on it:

sudo mkdir /media/linux
sudo mount /dev/sda5 /media/linux

2. I change to a root shell then chroot to the dir:

sudo -i
chroot /media/linux

3. Inside the new root I change the password of my user:

passwd matt

You don't have to reinstall. You need to reboot into recovery mode. That will give you a single user root shell. Then you can use passwd to change your users password and when you reboot , you should be able to login as usual.

Hope that helps.

Jo-Erlend

Thanks for the help. I have re-booted in recovery mode but I get "no such command" when I try 'passwrd' or 'password'

its not passwrd or password, its passwd :) no r at all

Because it isn't written like that, read Jo-Erlend Schinstad's post more carfully, the command is called "passwd" ;)

I apologize for my dyslexic reading. I have tried "passed" three times, with three different passwords but every time I re-boot, I'm told the username/password are incorrect!

"passwd"

Matt Thomson, in the first reply, said I could go into recovery mode from the CD. I don't see how that is done. I can only go into recovery mode from the installed programe.

http://www.linuxforums.org/security/howto:_recover_root_password.html

That is an nice tutorial.

When you get your new root password, you can login on an TTy and use

passwd username

to change the user password

What is the command you're using? "passwd" will change password for the current user, which will be root and not your own user. Use "passwd yourusername" and, of course, never forget that passwords are case sensitive. "A" is not "a".

I have change the root password loads of times via the 'recovery mode' but when Ubuntu boot's it will not accept the new password. How do I re-install Ubuntu, so that it will accept a password?

You don't want to change your root password. The root account is disabled by default in Ubuntu, and you probably don't want to enable it. You want to change password for _your_ user. If the username of which you've forgotten the password is andy, then you want to "passwd andy".

Great! I'm glad to see everything worked out. Good luck on your Ubuntu adventures :)

Gosh it is so much faster then Windoze! I will recomend Ubuntu to everyone, including my boss BT plc!

But the problem is most of them are stuck with Windoze for a long time and a lack of literacy open source software... Particularly the place where i stay....:)