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I have a dedicated server that sits at home and is not public, running Ubuntu server. I normally tested game servers and websites on it. One day I went onto putty, my ssh client, and for some reason had trouble signing in. Then I went to the server itself and hooked up a monitor and keyboard and tried signing in from there and still could not login.

I restarted the system many times and still had the same result. It says (access denied). But for whatever reason I can login using my root account. My root password is the same password I use for my normal account. So I know my password isn't incorrect. And I know my username is correct as well. I've signed into this server many times without a problem. I'm stuck and have no clue on why and how this is happening.

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    you can use passwd from the root account to reset your password
    – You'reAGitForNotUsingGit
    Jun 15, 2017 at 0:21
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    Anyway you shouldn't have the same passwd for your root account ..
    – derHugo
    Jun 15, 2017 at 12:08

1 Answer 1

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Passwords of other users are not available (easily) even to root. They are hashed in the /etc/passwd database and /etc/shadow as well.

Your best bet here is to reset the password of your user with passwd like Android Dev suggested in the comments:

sudo passwd <yourusername>

and follow the on-screen steps to set a new password.

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