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My sister's Asus Eee PC has been collecting dust for the past 4 years ever since she started using her MacBook Air. I wanted to resurrect it and use it at school. It originally ran Windows XP, but then Ubuntu was installed. She doesn't remember her username, password or the root username/password. I can't do the "drop to root shell" without the correct root password. So, what can I do now to get logged in? Do I have to reinstall Ubuntu somehow or is there a way around not knowing the password? Thank You!

Josh Pinto
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    possible duplicate of How do I reset a lost administrative password? – bummi May 26 '15 at 17:06
  • It may be simpler to start fresh and install a recent version of Ubuntu/Lubuntu/Xubuntu and format over whatever was there before. – user68186 May 26 '15 at 17:19
  • @user68186 That's not really a valid answer, as it is possible to recover the system. – Thomas Ward May 26 '15 at 17:23
  • @ThomasW. That's why I didn't write it as an answer. It is a comment. OP didn't say anything about recovering the data. IMHO it is easier to do a fresh install than start with a 4 year old (possibly older) system and go through unsupported updates and bring it up to date. Anyway, assuming that the data is not encrypted, it can be easily copied to another external media using Live USB, before the fresh install. – user68186 May 26 '15 at 17:41
  • See How to install Ubuntu if you want to do that. – user68186 May 26 '15 at 17:43
  • @user68186 Actually recovering is easier than downloading the image, burning it, booting, reinstalling, waiting for software to install, then manually reinstalling all the programs they want/need. – Thomas Ward May 26 '15 at 20:49
  • Since your sister does not remember her username, you will need to add yourself as a new administrative user. Drop to root shell as described above, and use the command adduser username admin where username is your userID. See http://askubuntu.com/questions/80083/whats-the-regular-way-to-add-an-admin-user Then change the password for your username. – user68186 May 26 '15 at 21:55

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This can be done without reinstalling. Follow this tutorial.

Basically, when booting, you press shift then mount the partition and you are logged in as root without asking for the password. Then you just passwd and set a new password.

Davide
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