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I lost my Ubuntu password for my laptop (samsung np nf310). I found a lot of informations to recover it on askubuntu and other sites on internet, here just two of them:

How do I reset a lost administrative password?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LostPassword

I follow all the differents instructions I found, the results are always the same. When I enter my new password it is accepted, the "log on screen" disappears, the system prints out some informations and switches on the "log on screen" again and so on (and my password is never said false!!).

I tried to find on /var/log the informations printed just after I type my password but I did not find it.

What's happening? how can I see the lines printed after I type my password? Is there a turn around?

any suggestions would be highly appreciated

ps: I tried to reinstall Ubuntu/kubuntu/Lubuntu but it's failed

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eqtèöck
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@davidbaumann put me on the right direction, my home was encrypted. What I did:

  1. on grub I highlighted the version of the system I normally used and then typed "e"
  2. some lines are displayed, one of these lines finished with something like "ro quiet splash ...", I replaced this part of the line with "rw init=/bin/bash"
  3. pressed F10 -> boot is launched and user is then logged as root

I took a look on my ~, it was empty with just 2 files: "Access-Your-Private-Data.desktop" and "Readme.txt". The "Readme.txt" was about something called "ecryptfs-mount-private" I searched on the internet about that and I found some useful informations here: http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2011/04/introducing-ecryptfs-recover-private.html. I followed the instructions:

  1. dowload an Ubuntu version (at least 12.04)
  2. mount my root system (mkdir /tmp/tempRoot; mount /dev/sda1 /tmp/tempRoot)
  3. type in a terminal "sudo ecryptfs-recover-private" and follow the instructions

And then the shameful part, I was asked if I had the password for the encrypted directory, I tried one... and it worked. So I did again the first operations:

  1. on grub I highlighted the version of the system I normally used and then typed "e"

  2. some lines are displayed, one of these lines finished with something like "ro quiet splash ...", I replaced this part of the line with "rw init=/bin/bash"

  3. pressed F10, boot is launched and user is then logged as root

  4. as root I reinitialised the root passwrod with my original password with the command "password"

  5. I reinitialised the user's password with my original password and the command "password user_name"

  6. I typed "sync"

  7. "reboot -f"

I can now normally boot and loggin. Thank you both david and rusty!!!!

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