locked out!

[SandrA]

Dear all

I am trying to get my Dell D620 under Mint 14 to autologin - ie without a password cue - and also to schedule shutdown (& eventually auto startup).

I started with an admin and a Standard a/c but learnt I had to lose the latter to allow autologin, which I did. Before killing the Standard a/c I was able to enter 'sudo shutdown -h 23:00' into Terminal. It didn't work from Suspend state and I didn't try it from awake.

The BIG problem now is that I'm unable to enter anything into Terminal as it rejects my password. Likewise I can't change User Accounts because of the rejected password.

I'm beginning to wonder whether this PC is compatible with the OS: I had to do two clean installs from the DVD before I could get the GUI to work (buttons respond to clicking etc.).

Is there any hope for me and my would-be-friend Linux?

x S

[nomko]

Try this: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-res ... -password/.

[xenopeek]

I'm not sure what you mean by "admin and a Standard a/c", can you clarify? Do you mean with "admin" the account you created during installation of Linux Mint, or root? And with "Standard a/c" another user account created later? You can enable autologin for any user, from the Login Window application in your menu.

It would help if you can open a terminal and run the following command, and share the output here. You can copy text to/from the terminal, see its Edit menu.

Code: Select all

id

[nomko]

@xenopeek:
i think this is a result of this post of here: http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=123429

[TheDynamicHamza21]

Try this: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-res ... -password/.

that's old way using Grub 1. Mint 13/14 uses grub 2 it's a little different now.


Reboot your computer / Turn your computer on.
Hold down the Shift key at the start of the boot process to enable the GNU GRUB boot menu (if it does not show)
Press ESC at the GNU GRUB prompt.
Press e for edit.
Use the Arrow keys to highlight the line that begins with linux and press the e key.

then follow this advice:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 01#p675477

[nomko]

didn't noticed that!

[SandrA]

Hi

By "admin" I mean the account I created during installation of Linux Mint and with "Standard a/c" another user account created later. The latter's deleted.

I'm afraid that after following the Grub advice above I cannot open a terminal and run any commands as I can now only boot into Grub.

The makeuseof tips also didn't work.

x S

[SandrA]

Sorry - of course I can get past Grub - and this is what 'id' prodeces:

m@MO ~ $ id
uid=1000(m) gid=1000(m) groups=1000(m),4(adm),24(cdrom),27(sudo),30(dip),46(plugdev),107(lpadmin),119(nopasswdlogin),125(sambashare)
m@MO ~ $

S

[xenopeek]

Right, so you don't need to be a member of the group 'nopasswdlogin' for automatic login. As shared, automatic login you can enable in the Login Window application. Everything else for the user 'm' looks fine and just as it should be.

As I understand you, running any command with sudo from the terminal as user 'm' asks for the password of user 'm' and you can't recall that password. You can reset your password from recovery mode. See here how to do that: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 87#p621487

I suggest you change the passwords for user m and for root (to change the password for root, just run the command "passwd" without arguments). After installation of Linux Mint, the password that was set for the user m was also set as the password for root. Because you can't recall the password for m, I imagine you can also not recall the password for root. So hence my suggestion to change both passwords.

I think you should also remove user m from the group nopasswdlogin, and just use Login Window to set the automatic login. Unless you have replaced MDM with something else, that will work fine. What guide did you follow that had you add user m to this group? You can remove the user from this group also on the recovery mode, with:

Code: Select all

gpasswd -d m nopasswdlogin

[SandrA]

Thanks very much xenopeek for the latest tips.

I've reflected on my initial experiences of this OS and have decided that I've had the wrong initial approach. I need to be more cautious: I managed today to lock myself out of the system just by selecting what look like everyday options. I did not forget my passwords. However, just the act of setting my one admin account to login without a password somehow resulted in the valid password being rejected by Terminal and admin-level prefs.

So I've now done another clean install, changed those prefs that did not result in any problems and installed media files again. My next step will to research what backup and restore options are available so I can retreat from an future lockouts like this one.

Once I've got that sorted out I'll look at other essentials like scheduled shutdown which aren't built into the OS and so, I figure, may present some risk in trialling.

I'm really very grateful for the support of this forum and look forward to eventually making my own contributions.

; S