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[Solved] Resetting user password on remote instance without access to GRUB

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Fort-P
Posts: 3
Joined: 2023-02-01 18:45

[Solved] Resetting user password on remote instance without access to GRUB

#1 Post by Fort-P »

So, I am in a fairly unique situation. I have a VPS hosted with oracle cloud, and a couple of years ago I changed the OS it was running to Debian from Oracle Linux. This change went smoothly, and I have had no problems with it until a few days ago, when my password just randomly stopped working. There is only 1 user account on the machine, and I have the password under a few saved logins as well (FTP, SSH clients) so I know I am not just mistakenly remembering it. The password worked fine when I left one night, and then the very next morning, it will no longer allow me to login. I tried using a serial connection to reboot the instance and get the GRUB menu, but holding shift seemed to do nothing, (you can see it say "Welcome to GRUB" for less than half a second, then disappear. I was unable to press the arrow keys during this time, even with simulated keyboard input) and escape just brought me to a bios, from which I could not find a way to get to the GRUB menu. So, does anybody have/know of a way to reset the password for a user, while being unable to login, to either a root or user account, but at the same time not being able to access the GRUB bootloader? I have seen solutions that work by booting from a removable installation media and changing a few partitions, but I don't think that will work for me, as I don't have any way to physically interact with the machine.
Thanks in advance,
- Fort
Last edited by Fort-P on 2023-02-03 01:49, edited 1 time in total.

dlu2021
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Re: [Software] Resetting user password on remote instance without access to GRUB

#2 Post by dlu2021 »

I know it is a long shot, but maybe the keyboard is starting to go, does the password look right when you type in out in a non password field?

Fort-P
Posts: 3
Joined: 2023-02-01 18:45

Re: [Software] Resetting user password on remote instance without access to GRUB

#3 Post by Fort-P »

Yeah, my keyboard works fine for everything else, and when I type the password in a regular text field, and I don't think it is the SSH client interfering either, as I have tried a few different ones.

Fort-P
Posts: 3
Joined: 2023-02-01 18:45

Re: [Software] Resetting user password on remote instance without access to GRUB

#4 Post by Fort-P »

UPDATE
I got this working by moving the boot partition to another working vm, and using chroot to force change the password

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