[ubuntu-uk] Username reset for 8.04

[Matthew Macdonald-Wallace]

Quoting mike daniels <mikezz1011 at yahoo.com>:

> Hi all, have forgotton my username. Have tried Username and username  
>  in "Drop to route shell" ....command not recognised!
> Acceped password change ok.
> An "urgent" help-call please!
> Thanks, michael

Can you log in at all?

If you can, fire up a root terminal and

cat /etc/passwd | less

if you can't, its a bit more complex:

1) Boot the system from a live/recovery CD (the ubuntu disk will suffice)
2) Mount your current / partition (usually /dev/sdax where x is a  
number) to a suitable place (/media/oldroot is useful but may need  
creating first).
3) run

less /media/oldroot/etc/passwd

4) if you still don't have your username, come back to the list.

M.


-- 
Matthew Macdonald-Wallace
matthew at truthisfreedom.org.uk
http://www.truthisfreedom.org.uk/