newbie: login with no password. Help!

[Neil Woolford]

At 19:29 11/12/04, you wrote:

>At 6:58 PM +0000 12/11/04, Neil Woolford scribbled:
>>At 18:22 11/12/04, you wrote:
>>
>>>How can you login as root when Ubuntu installs with an unknown/scrambled 
>>>root password?
>>>
>>>...ROMeyn
>>
>>Easy if you have physical access to the machine.
>>
>>Start up and watch for the Grub loading message;  the instant this 
>>appears press the Esc key
>>which will bring up the Grub menu.  From this select the 'Recovery 
>>mode'.  This will start you
>>at a root console.
>
>
>Ah.  Is there not a distinction between "logging in as root" and "having 
>root access to a file system"?  Perhaps it's just me...
>
>...ROMeyn

Not quite sure what you mean here;  if I follow the steps above I'm given a 
terminal that says root at mysystem with a # prompt.
Looks like being logged in as root to me.

Certainly a previous poster's instructions about using useradd then work 
fine on my system, so I am able to execute commands
that require root privileges.

 From the original poster's point of view, however, the difficulty is that 
to get a user who has the appropriate group memberships and
entry in sudoers to be really useful is doubtless possible, but quite a lot 
of work.  It would be worth doing to recover a system with
valuable data and setups, but in his case probably just easier to chalk it 
up to experience and reinstall.

Neil

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