If you’ve ever forgotten your password, you aren’t alone… it’s probably one of the most common tech support problems I’ve encountered over the years. Luckily if you are using Ubuntu they made it incredibly easy to reset your password.
There are many reasons you might want to reset a password:
- Someone gave you a computer with Ubuntu installed on it but not the password for the user account.
- You just installed Ubuntu and forgot what password you selected during the installation process.
- You have too many passwords in your life and can't keep track of them all.
Reboot your computer, and then as soon as you see the GRUB Loading screen, make sure to hit the ESC key so that you can get to the menu.
- From the boot menu, select recovery mode, which is usually the second boot option.
- Then choose “Drop to root shell prompt” from this menu.
- This should give you a root shell prompt.
- To reset the password, type
- passwd username
- 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.
- After changing your password, use the following commands to reboot your system. (The sync command makes sure to write out data to the disk before rebooting)
- syncreboot –f then hit enter
- After normal restart you will be able to login with your new password