I have accidentally turned off my password - how do I recover from this?

Question

I have the following problem with my computer. It's a desktop, 32 bit, originally came with Windows XP, 999.4 MiB of RAM, Intel Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz x 2, 77.7GB disk space.

1. I accidentally turned off my password, :( so if I need to download something I can't. And I can't put a diff. OS on here, my USB was missed up by Ubuntu, its a 1Gb USB, and it says there is no room on there "With nothing on it"

If I type su in the terminal, it asks me for my password, I type it in, doesn't work. This was before I changed my password. During the installation I was never asked for a password.

Answer 1

Can you use sudo command?

sudo <command_to_execute_as_root>

If not, you can try enter in the GRUB boot manager. In the Ubuntu option press the "e" key to edit, edit the line "linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-18-generic root=UUID=00aad4d6-a7e5-41ce-a25e-dfda8664bb99 ro quiet splash" and add in the end:

init=/bin/bash

This boot machine with bash directly without passwd. The you must remount the root filesystem in read/write mode:

mount -o remount,rw /

And you can execute passwd to change the root passwd. ;)