Password forgotten

[EsimesacPeriodique]

I got this problem:
What if I can't recall my pwd... I just installed Linux and made a mistake and entered nothing particular as password and I don't remember what it is...

Thx!

[xenopeek]

Then you will have to reinstall. You can change the password of a user from the recovery mode option in the GRUB boot menu, but you will need to know the root password for that--which is initially set to the password of the user created during installation. So that doesn't help you, hence suggesting you reinstall and keep your password somewhere safe.

[remoulder]

need to know the root password for that

Actually Vincent, you don't! You can use init=/bin/bash to bypass the password request.

[xenopeek]

Thanks remoulder, I didn't know that.

EsimesacPeriodique, you can recover your user's password as follows. Note that this only works if you have an unencrypted home folder, if you chose to encrypt your home folder during the installation of Linux Mint this will need different steps.

1. Boot your computer, and hold the shift key to make the GRUB boot menu show. Use the arrow keys to highlight the second entry in the menu (recovery mode) and press the 'e' key to edit the boot parameters. Scroll down to the line starting with 'linux' and at the end of that line add " init=/bin/bash" (without the quotes). Then continue the boot and you should drop to a text screen and are now root.

2. Start with mounting the filesystem so that you can write changes to it. Execute the following command:

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mount  -o remount,rw  /

3. Then type:

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passwd username

Where your replace username with your username. You are then asked to enter a new password for this user.

4. I think you can also run:

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passwd

And you can then set a new password for the root user. I suggest setting it the same as your other password, for now at least to avoid confusion.

5. Reboot:

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reboot