GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
Desktop Survival Project Home Preface Advocacy History Distributions Installing GNU/Linux Basic Survival Wajig Applications AI, Machine Learning, Data Science Android - GNU/Linux Devices Audio Backup Booting CD Chinese ChRoot Clock Command Line Databases DIA Directories Disks EcoSysL Emacs Email Evolution Files File Systems Firewalls Floppy Disks FreedomBox Glade GNOME Graphics, Images, Photos Hardware Initialisations on Booting Installation Examples Internet IOT Java KDE Kernels Keyboard Konqueror KVM Switch LATEX Log System Login Magellan MATE Mathematics Memory Modems Mounting Devices MS/Windows Music MySQL Nautilus Networks Nextcloud Network File System NFS NT File System Oracle Packages Partitions Passwords PDF Power Management PPP Presentations Printing Python R Remote Desktops Rsync Samba Scanning Science Screens Security Spreadsheet SSH Swap Teradata Data Warehouse Themes TV Unity USB Version Control Video Virtualization Voice over IP WebCam WordPress Web Sites Word Processing and Printing X XML Troubleshooting Index

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE UPDATED SURVIVAL GUIDE

Passwords

If you forget your password for root, then you will be in a spot of bother. One way to fix this is to reboot the machine using the Debian installation floppy or CD. When you get the first question (about the having a colour monitor) press CTRL-ALT-F1 to get a shell. Mount your root partition (let's say it is /dev/hda1):

# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt

then edit the password file to erase the encrypted password for root:

# editor /mnt/etc/passwd

Save the file then reboot (CTRL-ATL-DEL).