Ubuntu
shadow package

12.10 Forgotten Password

Asked by Chris Brock

Hello,

I am very new to Ubuntu, so please bear with me. I gave my Lenovo Y510 to my father-in-law to repair when a windows driver magically came up missing. He tried for a little while and said "Screw this, we are going to make this an Ubuntu system." He installed it for me while I was away on business. He setup the operating system(Ubuntu 12.10) and the password. He made the password his daughters name but accidentally made a typo. Therefore I searched around on the forum and found many problems similar to mine. However, all the solutions, I try, I get different results than the solutions found on the forum.

So here is what I tried:

First, I tried the unofficial solution, which can be found here: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/resetpassword

I figured out how to get in to the root shell.

I type the first command verbatum which is this: mount -o rw,remount/

after I press enter, I get something that explains that I can only remount a file system (it gives a very long explaination of this and other things as well as a list of options, but the part I mentioned is all I remember).

So that kind of stumped me, I tried different combinations of spacing and etc. thinking I have made a typo in the command and as far as I can tell I have not.

Then I tried the official documentation method which can be found here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/12.10/ubuntu-help/user-forgottenpassword.html#live-cd

I have a little bit more luck with this method. I get farther into the steps. However, when I enter the new password it says "Authentication Token Manipulation Error" then another line below that says "password unchanged". I know I am not spelling the passwords differently because I have done that and before I get the token manipulation error is tells me the password does not match.

I did not try the other two solutions on the official documentation, because I am new to Ubuntu and am not sure if I am advanced enough to try them.

Does anybody have any ideas as to what I should do next? Thank you for all of your help.

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N1ck 7h0m4d4k15 (nicktux) said : 		#1

It seems that you have tried the 2 most popular methods of reseting password and as you stated "newbie user" I cannot suggest anything else except to try again the method from psychocat's site.

Be careful , be very careful when write the commands. As you (probably) already understood , Linux is very sensitive in writing. Caps , commas , spaces , dashes , everything matters. So proofread twice before hit Enter.

The command as you quoted here is wrong . Look again , it wants a space between remount and /

mount -o rw,remount /

Thanks

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Mark Rijckenberg (markrijckenberg) said : 		#2

Please try these solutions as well:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/91188/authentication-token-manipulation-error

http://www.ubuntux.org/node/9750

Here are guides that may help you learn about GNU/Linux:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ExternalGuides

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gem silver (gemsilver412) said : 		#3

Hi there, I can understand how frustrating it can be when you're new to Ubuntu and encountering issues like this. It's great that you've tried a couple of solutions already, but it seems like you're still having trouble resetting the password.

One thing you could try is booting into recovery mode and resetting the password from there. You can do this by pressing and holding the Shift key while your computer is booting up, which should bring up the GRUB menu. From there, select the "Advanced options for Ubuntu" and then select the recovery mode option.

Once you're in recovery mode, select the "root" option and then enter the following command:

Copy code
mount -o rw,remount /
After that, you should be able to reset the password by entering the following command:

css
Copy code
passwd [username]
Replace [username] with your username on the system.

Hopefully, this solution works for you. Good luck! For more visit : https://garagedoorrepairchesapeake.com/diy-vs-professional-garage-door-opener-repair-which-option-is-best/

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