[Solved] Installed UFW, Now cannot log in

[Augie77]

It took me longer to bork Debian than it did Mint. Embarrassingly enough, this post is from my Mint install.

I installed and enabled UFW from terminal but failed to allow SSH. I was going to use the UFW gui for that and not thinking, I rebooted the PC.
Now after logging in, I have the Emerald screen, a cursor that moves, and nothing else. I booted to the Advanced setting thinking I might be able to struggle through it, but the session fails with a line indicating that 'root' is locked out. Truly, I am thoroughly borked.

Any suggestion on how to remedy this mess-up. I do have a clone of the install, and numerous backups that can be copied over to Mint and then reapplied to Bookworm after a clone. But, I would rather try to fix this first.

Appreciate any help.

[Augie77]

Thinking about this, root probably is locked as I did not declare a root password during install. Hindsight is 20-20, so it seems. I can do a live boot with the USB .iso, but from there I am not certain what to do.

[dlu2021]

I believe that it is possible to reset a forgotten root password even if it is disabled:

https://linuxconfig.org/recover-reset-f ... t-password

[Augie77]

I believe that it is possible to reset a forgotten root password even if it is disabled:

https://linuxconfig.org/recover-reset-f ... t-password

Thank you, that did the trick and the instructions worked perfectly. This was my first time using Recovery Mode so I was a bit skittish, but I guess after a year and a half of Linux, some of the things I have read must have sunk in. I had installed UFW and rsyslog prior to boffing my system. Once I followed your instructions, I booted to Recovery and used apt to remove and purge UFW and rsyslog, then did a autoremove. Rebooted and was able to log in.

I appreciate the help and I am happy to be back on my Bookworm system.

[Augie77]

One last question. I notice that when logging in now, I get a double flash of the emerald screen, and then a double flash of the desktop screen. Which made me wonder, as a side thought, if I needed to update grub?

[dlu2021]

Not sure about that one.