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How do I reset a lost administrative password?

I'm working on a Ubuntu system. My client has completely forgotten his Administrative Password. He doesn't even remember entering one;
however it is there.

I've tried the suggestions on the website and I have been unsuccessful in deleting the password so that I can download applets required for
running some files. Do you have a solution?

password-recovery

edited yesterday asked Jan 30 '11 at 14:50

Whaaaaaat user9904
3,631 1 6 37

14 Answers

By default the first user's account is an administrative account, so if the UI is prompting you for a
password it's probably that person's user password. If the user doesn't remember their password
you need to reset it. To do this you need to boot into recovery mode.

Boot up the machine, and after the BIOS screen, hold down the left Shift key. You will then be
prompted by a menu that looks something like this:

I've noticed on some systems that timing when to hit the left Shift key can be tricky, sometimes I
miss it and need to try it again.

Hit the down arrow until you select the 2nd entry from the top (the one with the recovery mode in
the description) and then hit Enter .

Now you should see this menu:

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Using the arrow keys scroll down to either root or netroot (doesn't matter in this case) and then hit
Enter .

You should now see a root prompt, something like this:

root@ubuntu:~#

At this stage you should have a read-only filesystem. You have to remount it with write
permissions:

mount -rw -o remount /

Now we can set the user's password with the passwd command. (In this example I will use jorge as
the example, you need to substitute whatever the user's username is):

root@ubuntu:~# passwd jorge

Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
root@ubuntu:~#

Type in what you want the new password to be at the prompt. After it's successful reboot the
machine and the user will be able to log in with their new password.

Recovery Mode documentation

Lost password documentation

There is concern about this being a security vulnerability. It is not. You need to have physical access
to the machine to do this. If someone has physical access to your PC, they could do far worse than
change a password. When it comes to physical access, the battle for security is lost. Be wary of who
you let on your PC.

Even setting a root password will not be successful, as one can simply boot with init being
/bin/sh and have full root access. Again, given physical access, anyone with computer knowledge
can do ANYTHING to your computer.

edited yesterday answered Jan 30 '11 at 17:03

Whaaaaaat Jorge Castro
3,631 1 6 37 23.1k 71 315 530

1 I just tried it and passwd username worked. I'm very surprised. Why is this not considered a security issue?
(especially for desktop PCs) – Meligy Sep 23 '12 at 5:42

40 It isn't a security issue, because you still have to be sitting in front of the machine to do this. And if you have
physical access to the computer you can do pretty much anything to it anyway. – Bobble Oct 3 '12 at 0:51

13 Just to follow-up on Bobble's correct comment: if you have physical access to a machine, you can take the disk
out and mount it on a totally separate system where you do have root. Just as one example. The only protection
against full data compromise in the face of physical access is strong disk encryption. – arielf Mar 3 '13 at 19:59

I had to go the route of editing the boot command. But your note here about remounting was the bit I was
missing. Here is how to edit the boot command: makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-reset-any-linux-password –
ChronoFish May 17 '13 at 1:22

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4 Just to add to the security issues coming up here, it is possible to protect your root password by setting a root
password using sudo passwd when you do remember the password. However, by doing this you will have to
enter the password even in recovery mode, which will make this solution useless and you will have to always
remember the root password(not the administrative account one). – i08in Nov 4 '13 at 10:15

Yes you can change the old password via Grub

1. If you have a single-boot (Ubuntu is the only operating system on your computer), to get the
boot menu to show, you have to hold down the Shift key during bootup.

2. If you have a dual-boot (Ubuntu is installed next to Windows, another Linux operating system,
or Mac OS X; and you choose at boot time which operating system to boot into), the boot
menu should appear without the need to hold down the shift key.

3. From the boot menu, select recovery mode, which is usually the second boot option.

4. After you select recovery mode and wait for all the boot-up processes to finish, you'll be
presented with a few options. In this case, you want the Drop to root shell prompt option so
press the ᛎ Down arrow to get to that option, and then press Enter to select it.

5. Once you're at the root shell prompt, if you have forgotten your username as well, type ls
/home (small letters & not capitals). This will list all the user accounts in your set up.

6. To reset the password, type passwd username where username is the username you want to
reset eg. passwd mysterio in my case.

7. You'll then be prompted for a new password. When you type the password you will get no
visual response acknowledging your typing. Your password is still being accepted. Just type
the password and hit Enter when you're done. You'll be prompted to retype the password.
Do so and hit Enter again.

8. Now the password should be reset. Type exit to return to the recovery menu.

9. After you get back to the recovery menu, select resume normal boot, and use Ubuntu as you
normally would — only this time, you actually know the password!

Hope this helps. Sorry I couldn't add images as I'm on my phone

edited Aug 1 '13 at 16:38 answered Mar 31 '12 at 21:49

Gediminas Jeremiah Gudelis Mysterio
442 3 17 3,277 13 53 93

This offers a route for when you forget both userid and password, which would also work with @Jorge Castro's
answer. – Bobble Oct 3 '12 at 0:59

If Jorge's method didn't work for you, as it didn't for me, here is another method. I had to try
something different because:

1. My USB keyboard did not work at the root prompt ⋯ probably hardware either keyboard or
mainboard. To fix I used an old PS/2 keyboard (the little round plug) and use that.

2. When I used passwd username to change my password, it failed because of a bad token or such.
This called for drastic measures.

The Drastic Measures

This is a very dangerous thing to do! Jorge's method should be used; only do this in case that
method doesn't work.

Do this at your own risk. It did work for me on my 11.10 system.

The idea is to set the user's password to blank (or null) - this allows you to just press Enter at the
Password: prompt.

Still at the root prompt from Jorge's method, first remount the root file system as read-write by
using this command:

mount -o remount,rw /

Now you are a super-user on this system. Tread lightly.

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Then edit the password shadow file to remove the encrypted password for your username. Type in:

nano -B /etc/shadow

The nano editor will display the contents of the file. Each line will have the form name:⋯:⋯:⋯… where
⋯ is a string or null (empty). One of the lines will start with your username. The first ⋯ after your
username is your encrypted password. As an example:

username:$1$amFeNcjp$PprjCKEVk3UtzKwWfEMOY0:14920:0:99999:7:::

where $1$amFeNcjp$PprjCKEVk3UtzKwWfEMOY0 is the encrypted password.

Carefully delete the encrypted password leaving the all the ":"s, so it looks like this:

username::14920:0:99999:7:::

Then type Ctrl + O , press the Enter key to save, then Ctrl + X to close nano.

Reboot and you will have an empty (or null) password. Be sure to use passwd username in a terminal
to set or reset your user password.

Source for PS/2 workaround was here.

Sources for the drastic measures were here and here.

Note on nano ― the -B option makes a backup of the original edited file, same name with a "~"
appended.

edited Aug 1 '13 at 16:40 answered Dec 2 '11 at 20:55

Gediminas Jeremiah Gudelis keepitsimpleengineer
442 3 17 2,246 20 47

2 You can also use this method by booting with a different disk and editing /etc/shadow after mounting the
appropriate disk. – Mei Mar 29 '12 at 23:52

Ubuntu does not come with an Administrative password. There is only one initial account, the user
account, which can be used to execute administrative tasks. For example, to get a root shell you run

$ sudo -i
[sudo] password for myuseraccount: # here you type the user's password
#

A lot of people that have Unix background or experience with other distributions stumble on this
issue quite often.

The command

su

will always fail because the root account is locked; it cannot be accessed directly or you cannot
login directly to root .

There are great advantages in using the sudo facility.

edited Jun 7 '13 at 18:56 answered Jan 30 '11 at 15:58

guntbert user4124
4,002 9 16 40 4,712 1 11 23

If you forgot you password for your Ubuntu system you can recover using the following steps:

1. Turn your computer on.

2. Press ESC at the grub prompt.

3. Press e for edit.

4. Highlight the line that begins kernel ......... or linux ........ , press e

5. Go to the very end of the line and add rw init=/bin/bash

6. press enter , then press b to boot your system. Your system will boot up to a passwordless
root shell.1

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7. Now issue the command passwd username *where "username" is the user for which you want to
change the password.

8. Then you will be asked to give new password:

Enter new UNIX password:

1Source:ubuntugeek

Other Resources:

Ubuntu Documentations

Ubuntu Help

Psychocats

For Xubuntu 14.04 just follow the screens below. Its similar to some of the other answers.

Press ESC , and choose Advanced Options

Choose Recovery Mode

Then choose Root, and once you get the prompt type passwd <user_name> , to change the password

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edited Apr 25 at 12:17 answered Jul 18 '12 at 19:55

Mitch ♦
41k 8 70 117

The OP may not know what to do at the shell. – hexafraction Jul 18 '12 at 20:10

Did not work in Xubuntu 14.04 LTS - no command in GRUB2 beginning kernel or linux. – K7AAY Apr 25 at 3:52

@K7AAY see my addition for Xubuntu 14.04. – Mitch ♦ Apr 25 at 12:17

you are life saver its worked for me in ubuntu 14.04 – Maulik.J Jul 8 at 19:20

Glad that it worked for you. – Mitch ♦ Jul 8 at 19:25

I was able to use Jorge's method - the one above with the nice screen shots - with a few minor
changes. I'm using Ubuntu 11.10

First, when booting up - don't press the left shift key until the BIOS screen goes black and then
immediately press and hold the left shift key.

Then, after perhaps a minute and a number of lines of text scroll on the screen, I got the first menu,
but with a couple of fewer lines - I chose the second line.

Then I got the Recovery Menu - but when I chose Drop to Root Shell Prompt (bottom item) I was
root but couldn't reset the password - because the disks were Read Only. Type exit and get back to
the Recovery Menu

There was a choice (not shown on Jorge's screen shot) to Remount Read/Write Used the down
arrow to go to it, then left arrow to get to and Enter - and it mounted the disk RW.

Then again to Drop to Root Shell Prompt and I'm root and can write - so passwd username had me
enter the desired password twice - then exit to go back to Recovery Menu Resume normal boot and
everything worked fine with my new password! I'm the only account on this box, and my password
works with sudo so I apparently have Administrative Privileges.

This was less exciting than editing /etc/shadow but I was glad to trade the excitement for a nice
ending.

answered Jan 1 '12 at 3:14

Henry Schaffer
91 1 1

First, you have to reboot into recovery mode.

If you have a single-boot (Ubuntu is the only operating system on your computer), to get the boot
menu to show, you have to hold down the Shift key during bootup.

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From the boot menu, select recovery mode, which is usually the second boot option.

After you select recovery mode and wait for all the boot-up processes to finish, you'll be presented
with a few options. In this case, you want the Drop to root shell prompt option so press the Down
arrow to get to that option, and then press Enter to select it.

The root account is the ultimate administrator and can do anything to the Ubuntu installation
(including erase it), so please be careful with what commands you enter in the root terminal.

Once you're at the root shell prompt, if you have forgotten your username as well, type

ls /home

That's a lowercase L, by the way, not a capital i, in ls. You should then see a list of the users on your
Ubuntu installation. In this case, I'm going to reset Susan Brownmiller's password.

To reset the password, type

passwd username

where username is the username you want to reset. In this case, I want to reset Susan's password,
so I type

passwd susan

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You'll then be prompted for a new password. When you type the password you will get no visual
response acknowledging your typing. Your password is still being accepted. Just type the password
and hit Enter when you're done. You'll be prompted to retype the password. Do so and hit Enter
again.

Now the password should be reset.

Type exit

to return to the recovery menu.

After you get back to the recovery menu, select resume normal boot, and use Ubuntu as you
normally would—only this time, you actually know the password!

source

answered Apr 1 '12 at 2:51

Ringtail
10.5k 11 31 147

From the official Ubuntu LostPassword documentation:

1. Reboot your computer

2. Hold Shift during boot to start GRUB menu

3. Highlight your image and press E to edit

4. Find the line starting with "linux" and append rw init=/bin/bash at the end of that line

5. Press Ctrl + X to boot.

6. Type in passwd username

7. Set your password.

8. Type in reboot . If that doesn't work, hit Ctrl + Alt + Del

This works for Linux Mint 14, too.

edited Jul 27 '13 at 6:14 answered Mar 11 '13 at 16:35

Radu Rădeanu moose
45.7k 12 82 165 970 1 11 27

1 I was working on a computer whose user had lost both the admin and the root passwords. This is the only method
that solved his problem, thanks! – Waldir Leoncio Jul 14 '13 at 12:59

If recovery mode is disabled, the method I would use is booting to a Live CD or USB. It could be the
media you installed from or just another Ubuntu ISO you've downloaded and burnt. The process is
fairly simple.

1. Boot to the Live media.

2. From the menu, open a terminal.

3. Find out the device name for your primary disk. sudo fdisk-l will list all partitions. Derive your
partition from the list. We're looking for something like /dev/sda1 (which it will likely be)

4. Mount this somewhere so we can use it (obviously change the disk to the right one):

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

5. Cross-mount things from the Live install so we can "use" the mounted disk (just copy and
paste):

for d in dev sys run proc; do sudo mount --bind /$d /mnt/$d; done

6. Become root on the system by running sudo chroot /mnt . You can now do anything root can on
the real install.

7. Set the password for the account:

passwd username

8. Reboot and you're done.

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answered Mar 17 at 9:16

Oli ♦
108k 25 258 431

Worked like a champ in Xubuntu 14.04 LTS. Recomended. – K7AAY Apr 25 at 3:51

You can change your password if you have access to the file /etc/shadow (maybe with your root account, via sudo
from anotother account, from recovery mode, or with a LiveCD/DVD).

This shadow password file has all the users and encrypted passwords (as well as other administrative information)
for the system. The fields are separated by : . For example :

YOUR_USERNAME:$6$lCu1.iVo$Q3nAL98jBLe5mMJ.0dBDd1Iquz41dDKsP3UdJ4X92gZPwwmQ0vdIEIY8EQxEcYACoMboYhovrpyq7Tm.DztQB.:15520
:0:99999:7:::

The password is the second group of characters after YOUR_USERNAME , between the two colons. You can replace this
with a other password, for example, you could replace the existing password string (truncated for clarity):

$6$lCu1.iVo$Q3nAL98jBLe5mMJ.0[...]boYhovrpyq7Tm.DztQB.

with

$6$8gMLdPVn$Ych6r5ysKRqhL9jOlg0UPe28KRuzo3TSYMShqb5pzACrE/A0oyDEBFefOgplbboeoe0T9ZqNz7u6Y8YWuQRkz/

The encrypted string represents "hackme". This would be your new password.

edited Nov 3 '12 at 22:30 answered Jul 18 '12 at 19:57

belacq Andrés Ricardo Torres Mart
9,339 9 50 83 435 4 14

I was having the same problem with my password and I tried everyone's suggestions but none
worked for me. So I tried some of my own and this is what worked for me... "Keep in mind I can NOT
explain why it worked, all I know is it worked...

"10 Easy and Simple steps to Reset Lost or Forgotten Password"

1. Reboot computer and hold the Left Shift Key down.

2. Select boot into recovery mode.

3. After a few seconds you should get the "Recovery Mode Options" screen.

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Note: (Here is the part I can't explain. After trying everything, and nothing working, I finally
just started trying all the options here one at a time. When I tried the "grub Update grub boot
loader" and then followed the rest of the steps all was well and password was reset.)

So before going to the "root Drop to root shell promt" selection,

4. Select "grub Update grub boot loader" , and you should get this screen.

5. Select "Yes" . Wait for it to go through the update.

6. Now select "root Drop to root shell prompt" .

7. Now you should be at a root terminal with something like the following:
youracctname@yourcompname:~$. type passwd accountname ( acountname being the name of the
account you are trying to change the password for ).

8. Enter new Unix password: "enter the new password".

9. Retype new Unix password: "retype the same password you did in Step-8".

10. It should confirm successful password change. type exit at the prompt and reboot.

If this does not work for you, try skipping Steps 4 & 5...

edited Sep 23 '13 at 20:44 answered Sep 18 '13 at 7:18

SoCalDiegoRob
437 1 12

In which OS have you forgot the password, Ubuntu or XP? For Ubuntu, in the boot GRUB menu, you
may append init=/bin/bash to the kernel boot parameter to get a root shell.

answered May 12 '12 at 2:44

Xiè Jìléi
2,007 6 17 29

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It is the password of Ubuntu my friend .And I got it done .Any way a big thanks to you too for your kindness Xie. –
Noah Diaz May 12 '12 at 3:21

2 On the askubuntu site you ask for Windows Xp? :D – saji89 Sep 19 '12 at 4:11

No, there is no way to retrieve the old password.

Yes, you can change the password without knowing the old one. The process is described on several
sites on the net, easily found via a search on Google

If you do that however and happened to have used an encrypted /home directory for that username
you are likely not to gain access to the files in your /home directory (and if you do then Ubuntu
should be uninstalled...)

edited Aug 1 '13 at 16:50 answered Mar 31 '12 at 21:41

Gediminas Jeremiah Gudelis user52904
442 3 17 27 1

Somehow booting into recovery mode did not work for me because it would not boot into the root
system. And when I tried to change the root password it asked me for the root password, which I
didn't have. An alternative to this problem is using UXterm which is a simpler version of terminal
and seems to have root system capabilities. Just type in "passwd" and enter your new password
and it's changed.

This works fine for Ubuntu 1.10. to bring up command line. Enter sudo passwd root. Enter new
password 2X. back to GUI. Logout, then login as root to test.

edited Jun 17 '12 at 18:19 answered Mar 29 '12 at 23:25

Community ♦ KoVo
1 42 6

3 This unfortunately won't work for most cases. – belacq Nov 3 '12 at 22:32

protected by Community ♦ Apr 10 '12 at 0:46

Thank you for your interest in this question. Because it has attracted low-quality answers, posting an
answer now requires 10 reputation on this site.

Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?

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