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password reset rejected

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drake
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password reset rejected

#1 Post by drake »

Having forgotten my password for Debian 11 I went to the technowikis site for a lucid step by step howto. The example given for the first screen after pressing the e key in the grub menu shows the output of the linux line:

linux /boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0.3-amd64 root=UUID=(then a long series of numbers and letters) ro quiet

but on my system it reads:
linux /vmlinz-amd64 root/dev/mapper/(username)--vg-root ro quiet

You will note that there is no "reboot" before the /vmlinuz and everything after "root" has changed except for the ro quiet.

Maybe this is why when I replace the text "ro quiet" with init= bin/bash and press enter I get:
initrd /initrd.img-5.10.0.8=amd64 which does not allow me to enter the mount command.

No doubt the answer is very simple to anyone who can read linux terminal output but as I can't I would be grateful for any help.

Thanx

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Hallvor
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Re: password reset rejected

#2 Post by Hallvor »

I used this method once, and it worked fine.
https://www.tecmint.com/reset-forgotten ... in-debian/
[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD

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Re: password reset rejected

#3 Post by p.H »

drake wrote: 2021-11-27 15:26 You will note that there is no "reboot" before the /vmlinuz and everything after "root" has changed except for the ro quiet.
Where do you see "reboot" ?
The differences are because you have a separate /boot partition (so no /boot in the kernel and initramfs paths) and the root filesystem in a LVM logical volume instead of a plain partition.
The important part is "ro" which must be replaced with "rw init=/bin/bash". You can leave "quiet" or remove it, it does change the verbosity.
drake wrote: 2021-11-27 15:26 Maybe this is why when I replace the text "ro quiet" with init= bin/bash and press enter I get:
initrd /initrd.img-5.10.0.8=amd64 which does not allow me to enter the mount command.
Huh ? I don't understand what you mean by "get" nor why you need the mount command. Do you also have a separate /usr (it makes no sense) ?
You must press <F10> immediately after editing the "linux" line to boot, not <Enter>. Press <enter> in the GRUB editor will only insert a new line.
Last edited by p.H on 2021-11-27 20:40, edited 1 time in total.

drake
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Re: password reset rejected

#4 Post by drake »

Thanks for your quick replies
To answer your questions:
"Where do you see "reboot?" My apologies that should have read "boot". And also for hitting enter instead of f10. Egg on my face for that one.
"why do you need the mount command". I followed the instructions given at:
https://www.tecmint.com/reset-forgotten ... in-debian/ Where it says that after hitting <F10> or ctrl+x you need to run the command ":/# mount -n -o remount,rw /" .

However I now have a new problem which occurs right after I hit <F10>. The output from this is huge but the last lines say:
"Volume group "username-vg" not found
cannot process volume groupusername-vg
Then it asked me to unlock disksda3_3crypt. Which having done the last message reads: " bash cannot set terminal process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device
bash no job control in this shell

And that's it. Except to answer your question as to whether I have a separate /usr. Not that I'm aware but then not for nothing did I put this whole question in the beginners section.

Hope this helps clairfy the situation and thanks again for your time.

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Re: password reset rejected

#5 Post by p.H »

drake wrote: 2021-11-27 20:25 after hitting <F10> or ctrl+x you need to run the command ":/# mount -n -o remount,rw /"
Ah, remount the root filesystem read-write so that you can write to the password file.
To avoid the need to do this you can replace "ro" with "rw" to the linux line in GRUB so that / is already mounted r/w. I edited my previous message to mention this.
drake wrote: 2021-11-27 20:25 Then it asked me to unlock disksda3_3crypt.
So you have an encrypted LVM, and this happens as usual.
drake wrote: 2021-11-27 20:25 the last message reads: " bash cannot set terminal process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device
bash no job control in this shell
This message is harmless. You should have a root shell prompt now and be able to carry on with the passwd command. If you do not like the error message you can write init=/bin/sh instead of /bin/bash, but you won't have the editing and history features of bash.

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Re: password reset rejected

#6 Post by drake »

Once again thanks for your quick response The problem has now been solved and I've learned a few things thanks to you.

However, unbelievable as it sounds I'm still not able to login. When I reboot and get taken to the login GUI with the username and type in the password the screen reverts to a terminal output screen for half a second and then flashes back to the login screen with the password removed. This by itself is strange because if I simply had the wrong password it would just say password failed. So I used the same procedure as above to get the root shell except that after after "passwd" I typed in username to change the user password. It returned "user does not exist". Now that is exactly the name that appears on the login GUI and the only one I have. So what gives? Is it possible for me to login from the root prompt so that I can get into the system and figure this out? I really hate to bother you with this as you've done quite enough already. So if I need to submit a new request please let me know.

Thanks again

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Re: password reset rejected

#7 Post by p.H »

Indeed the display manager should tell if the password is wrong. The screen flashing and reverting to the login screen after typing the password may indicate a successful login followed by a failure when starting the desktop environment. It may be caused by insufficient disk space, read-only filesystem, corrupted user config file...

Did you reset the root password or a user password ? The root password is useless to open a user session.
The display manager or desktop environment may not allow root login by default as this is considered insecure. But you can switch to a text console by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F<n> (where F<n> may vary between F1 and F6) and log in as root if you reset the root password. Then you can check the available disk space with df, whether filesystems are mounted read-write with mount, even create a new user with adduser and check whether the issue is the same with this user...

The actual username may be different from the "full name" displayed by the login screen. You can find the actual username by looking its home directory in /home, or user ID. 1st user has UID 1000, so

Code: Select all

id 1000

drake
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Re: password reset rejected

#8 Post by drake »

Yes I had reset the root password and I know for a fact that I have more then sufficient disk space. But as it's late at night here I will try your other suggestions in the morning and get back to you then.

Thanks

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Re: password reset rejected

#9 Post by p.H »

Resetting the root password has no effect on the user password and session.

drake
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Re: password reset rejected

#10 Post by drake »

Sorry for the delay.
Thanks to your instructions about CTRL+DEL+F I was able to get a root shell from the GUI logon screen. I then simply added a new user with password and on reboot I was gratified to see this user added to the GUI logon screen. Prematurely because when I clicked on this it flashed me straight to the terminal screen for an instant and then bounced me back to the logon screen just as with the first username. I'm now at a standstill because I don't yet have enough knowledge of terminal commands to know how to proceed further. Frankly, I'm about to throw in the towel on this one and just reinstall the whole thing.

Discouraged

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Re: password reset rejected

#11 Post by p.H »

Did you test what happens when you type a wrong password to see if it is different ?
Did you check the available disk space and inodes ?
Did you check that the filesystems are mounted read-write (rw), not read-only (ro) ?

Code: Select all

df -h
df -i
mount |egrep "/dev/(sd|nvme|mmc)"

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