Ubuntu
shadow package

unknown password for administrative tasks how to delete or restore password

Asked by Yvonne Warren

I just purchased a refurbished IBM Thinkpad T43 with Ubunto 9.04 OS. I want to upgrade to the latest 10.10, but the previous owner's password wasn't eliminated, so I cannot perform any administrative commands. What do I need to do to start fresh so I can upgrade, get Java, etc, other than installing Windows?

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Ubuntu shadow Edit question
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Best Ubfan (ubfan1) said : 		#1

Select the "recovery" version of the current kernel when given the grub screen. Force the grub screen to appear if it normally does not by holding down the shift key when booting. Select the root console (or something like that), and change the password of the user
passwd whateveruserisasmin

You should then be able to reboot with the normal kernel and login as that user.

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Yvonne Warren (apacherian-savanna) said : 		#2

Thanks Ubfan, that solved my question.

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Yvonne Warren (apacherian-savanna) said : 		#3

I now have admin power, but another problem. I want to upgrade to 10.01, but get an error message when I ask for upgrades to be done it is:

E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

I entered the command, then my password, and was promptedagain for user@user-laptop:

What do I do? Thanks!

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#4

Open a terminal (Applications→Accessories→Terminal) and type:

sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt.-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

the system ask you a password give your user password, you will not see nothing when you type it, then press enter