(LMDE 3) Bug: recovery boot unusable due to disabled root account

[megagrump]

After installing Nvidia drivers and bumblebee on a fresh LMDE 3 installation, my system keeps freezing while booting. Trying to fix it with recovery boot is not possible, because there's no way to log in. A message is shown that says "Can't log in, root account is disabled" (paraphrased).

How can I remove bumblebee, other than booting from another medium and chroot the installed system?

[catweazel]

How can I remove bumblebee, other than booting from another medium and chroot the installed system?

Clearly, if the root account is b0rked then you don't have much choice but to either chroot in or try to recover the account.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/24006/h ... e-password
https://askubuntu.com/questions/980102/ ... t-password

[megagrump]

The account is fine though. It's LMDE's recovery boot that is broken by design.

I've since wiped the installation and moved on. Thanks.

[axisofevil]

The first thing I did after the upgrade (due to needing to add some kernel options to solve a problem) was to try a recovery boot. It worked.
I could log into root & the password hadn't changed.

I don't know if LMDE2 assumed that root was disabled or had an unknown password; I didn't want that! So I did

sudo passwd root

from an admin user.