How to reset a forgotten password on Ubuntu easily – Guide
If you haven’t used Ubuntu in a while, it’s only natural that you don’t remember your password. The good news is that you don’t need to reinstall your entire operating system to do this. You can easily recover Ubuntu passwords. The method mentioned here works for resetting an Ubuntu password on VMware, dual boot or single install. All you need is a little patience and a few commands to run. They reset the root password within minutes. If you’ve already lost your password, you’re not the only one. It’s definitely one of the most popular tech support issues people have had over the years. The good thing is that you don’t have to reinstall the entire operating system due to a forgotten password. On Ubuntu they made it extremely easy to recover your password. On Linux, both normal users and superusers are allowed to access services through password authentication. If a regular user cannot remember their password, a super user can reset a regular user’s password directly from the terminal. But what if the superuser (or root user) loses their password? You need to recover lost password before booting into login screen. This allows any malicious user with physical access to your Linux host to take full ownership.
Reset Ubuntu Password from Recovery Mode
Booting into recovery mode
Drop at root shell prompt
Now you will see different options for recovery mode. Here you need to choose “Root – Drop to root shell prompt“. Just press the Enter key to select this option. You will see that when you select the root shell prompt option, an option to enter commands appears at the bottom. This is the root shell prompt and this is where you will use the commands to reset the password.
Remount root with write access
You need write access to the root partition. By default, it has read-only access. Use the command below to remount it with write access:
Reset username or password
Possible troubleshooting:
When entering the new password, you may receive an authentication token handling error like this: The reason for this error is that the file system is mounted with read-only access. Change access and remount the file system as follows:
Alternative method to reset Ubuntu password
If for some reason you have difficulty accessing the root shell and changing the password, try these steps.
Final note
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