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Login problem

Nitman23
Nitman23 Posts: 1
in Getting Started with Linux

Hi all,

I put the topic here because I basically know nothing about Linux. I have been put in charge of the IT department in our organisation and the previous person knew much more about Linux. Now I need to come into this Linux computer with Ubuntu OS. It gives me a login screen but I'm not able to choose the Administrator account. At one point I was able to select the guest account but then I was not able to access everything

Comments

  • arochester
    arochester Posts: 368
    Normally in Ubuntu there is not an Administrator account. Normally Ubuntu works with "sudo" rather than "su".

    There are different accounts of what sudo means, but one is "super user do". Sudo gives temporary Root rights for about 15 minutes.

    If you know the sudo password all well and good. If not then you will need to reset it. Look at e.g. http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/resetpassword
  • joel2001k
    joel2001k Posts: 10
    edited January 2015
    Assumed your root filesystem is on 1 partition you can do following to inspect partition: 
    fdisk

    Enter grub bootloader command line and modify kernel command line containing init=/bin/bash 
    linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.14.25-rt22 root=/dev/sda1 ro init=/bin/bash verbose
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.14.25-rt22

    The your logged in as root ...
    When you want to change password you have to mount filesystems like: 
    mount -o remount,rw /dev/sda1 /
mount -vt devtmpfs devtmpfs /dev
mount -vt devpts devpts /dev/pts -o gid=5,mode=620
mount -vt proc proc /proc
mount -vt sysfs sysfs /sys
mount -vt tmpfs tmpfs /run

    Then you can finally do: 
    passwd

    Assumed your bootloader is password protected then use grub-rescue CD-ROM put it in your drive and boot it. Do the steps above, as described. Hint with tabulator you get auto completion. So first do and substitute kernel and initrd with appropriate filename:

    Assumed first hard-disk drive first partition:
    set root=(hd0,1) 
    linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.14.25-rt22 root=/dev/sda1 ro init=/bin/bash verbose
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.14.25-rt22
boot

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