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Ubuntu 11.10 Password to root was lost Trying to reboot in safe mode to reset Holding shift (left or right) Esc F1 None are effective during bootup. No BIOS setting appear applicable.

All forums seem to indicate left shift should work. Any alternatives to boot into recovery/safe mode? Always more than one way to skin a cat on Linux...gotta love it. :)

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Being unable to access recovery mode at all, and being prompted for a password (which you don't have) to enter recovery mode, both make it so you can't use recovery mode to reset your password.

Therefore, your best bet is to reset the password using a live CD/DVD/USB.

(I'm not sure if this question should be closed as a duplicate of that one. My solution is the same, but the situation is different, and perhaps someone else can post an answer here about how to access the GRUB menu to enter recovery mode.)

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  • A note to other users, you also may need root to create this CD, so you will want to download it and create the USB boot on a separate machine. I am working on creating it now from a Windows 7 to test this solution, but thank you, it sounds promising!
    – user72847
    Jun 25, 2012 at 15:49
  • @user72847 In Ubuntu, it is not generally necessary to be an administrator, to burn a CD. (You may have to be an administrator to write an .iso image to a USB flash drive, though.) Jun 26, 2012 at 2:56

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