newbie: login with no password. Help!

[Simon Burke]

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 12:38:30 -0500, Romeyn Prescott
<prescor at digirom.potsdam.edu> wrote:
> At 11:59 AM -0500 12/11/04, wulf scribbled:
> >I'm not sure about whether you'll need to do a reinstall. I don't quite
> >understand what Gabriel is suggesting. If I were in that situation, I'd
> >probably try to boot the machine from a Live-CD distro, mount the
> >hard-drive, and see what I could do from there (-chroot- comes to mind
> >but I'd have to look it up to say more).
> >
> 
> Boot from Knoppix or some other LiveCD...or even a rescue floppy.
> Mount your filesystem and edit /etc/shadow.  Find your username entry
> and delete the password hash.  For example, fir a user "fred" you'll
> see an entry looking something like:
> 
> fred:$1$zeW7t1ge$0RUxnN2RsbiWPJOcYVpF/0:12746:0:99999:7:::
> 
> Delete everything between the 1st and 2nd colons so you have:
> 
> prescor::12746:0:99999:7:::
> 
> Reboot normally and login as 'fred' using no password.  Then set a password!
> 
> >However, assuming you do get a user account sorted out you can then
> >configure the login manager to let that person log in automatically.
> >That would be the "right" way of circumventing the login security; you
> >need a user account to fit into the filesystem permissions structure.
> >
I agree to a point, my  point is why dont you switch to another
console by pressing <ctrl><alt> + <F2>

the login as root.

then its as simple as type: adduser
Follow the prompts confrim and press enter, user created.
Type exit to logout the console

press <ctrl><alt> + <F7> to go back to the graphical environment and
login with the new user account. the configure it to always login as
that user, i can trember the menu listing to allow you to do this but
i think it is under the menu headed 'computer'

-- 
Theres no place like ::1

Thanks,
SimonB