Why would you want to reset a password..........?
1.) Someone gave you a computer with Ubuntu installed on it but not the password for the user account.
2.) You just installed Ubuntu and forgot what password you selected during the installation process.
3.) You have too many passwords in your life and can't keep track of them all. Well, then certainly you are at right place to find a solution to the problem, i.e. to reset your Ubuntu user account password, regardless of what reason you have for resetting it.
STEP 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.
If you have a dual-boot (Ubuntu is installed next to Windows, another Linux operating system, or Mac OS X etc 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 as shown below.
STEP 2) From the boot menu, select recovery mode, which is usually the second boot option.
STEP 3) 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.
In recent versions of Ubuntu, the filesystem is mounted as read-only, so you need to enter the follow command to get it to remount as read-write, which will allow you to make changes:
[user@linux ~]$ mount -o rw,remount /
If you have forgotten your
username as well, type
[user@linux ~]$ ls /home
You will see a list
of the users on your Ubuntu installation. Select a user and enter the following commands
[user@linux ~]$ passwd
<username>
where username is the username you want
to reset.You'll then be prompted for a new password.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.
STEP 4) Type exit to return to the recovery menu.
[user@linux ~]$exit
After you get back to the recovery menu, select resume normal boot, and use Ubuntu as you normally would .
Note: Recovery mode makes me root user. Isn't that a security risk?
Well, if you have several people using your computer, you can put small obstacles in their way by setting a root password, setting a Grub password, or setting a BIOS password. Still, anyone who has physical access to your computer and a little know-how practically has root access anyway. He can boot a live CD and mount your partition or even just physically remove the hard drive from your computer and put it in another computer. There's a certain amount of trust you automatically give anyone by allowing him to sit at your computer.
