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SoWhy

Score: 10 votes: 17 Format: Article

 Reset forgotten/lost main user password in Linux Mint 12+

This is an updated version of this turorial modified by advice from eiger3970 in the comments section of said tutorial.

To reset your lost or fogotten password:

1. Reboot your computer / Turn your computer on.
2. Hold down the Shift key at the start of the boot process to enable the GNU GRUB2 boot menu (if it does not show)
3. Select the entry for your Linux installation
4. Press e to edit.
5. Use the Arrow keys to navigate to a line that looks similar to this:
   
   linux /boot/vmlinuz-[kernel version]-generic root=UUID=[letters and numbers]\[letters and numbers] ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
    
6. Change ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 to rw init=/bin/bash so it now reads:
   
   linux /boot/vmlinuz-[kernel version]-generic root=UUID=[letters and numbers]\[letters and numbers] rw init=/bin/bash
    
7. Press F10 to boot your system.
8. Your system will boot up to a passwordless root shell.
9. Type in passwd yourusername
   (if you have also forgotten your username, type cat /etc/passwd first to get a list of all users, yours should be at the end)
10. Set your new password.
11. Restart your system.

Comments
1 year ago	bad-and-ugly	Is there a tutorial like this for Mint 17? These instructions didn't work for me...
1 year ago	nickeberta	This kind of worked for me but I can't access my encrypted homefolder anymore (of cause I lost the paraphrase as well).
1 year ago	winkleswizard	Worked for me on Rosa!
1 year ago	alsan	Thanks for the tutorial. The step 2 might be outdated, it's Shift-Esc in my case (I'm using mint 17.3). Also, after renew the password, the keyring is outdated too. All I did is remove the login.keyring file under ~/.local/share/keyrings/ and let the system recreate a default keyring for me. Hope these help someone else.
2 years ago	torchfire	You are a life-saver. Thanks for the great instructions. Note: On #8, for a newbie, there doesn't seem to be a prompt character at the end of the process. I kept waiting, but after a couple of minutes, I decided to go ahead and enter cat /etc/passwd and it worked. (It didn't bring up a simple list of users for me, but as SoWhy noted, my user name was at the bottom of that output.) Then I proceeded to the passwd yourusername command and it worked like a charm. Saved me from having to reinstall Mint altogether. I'm on 17.1 Rebecca Cinnamon. 4-15-2015 - Tax Day, here in the US. Thanks again for the helpful tutorial.
3 years ago	turkert	You saved my life. Mint 14 (Nadia)
3 years ago	w5gcx	in Linux MInt 16 it does not bring up rootless shell and let me set new pasword
3 years ago	FLOWXP	You saved my life !! this update is much more assuring and easier to use for a newbie thank you !!
3 years ago	cdaaawg	This method does not work for my Mint 13 Maya 64 bit installation. I get a black screen with no boot messages after pressing F10.
4 years ago	jahid_0903014	important
4 years ago	MagicMint	In contrast to simply using the recovery mode entry of the menu, this method will also let you recover the root password.
4 years ago	Hammer459	Good tutorial on a rare but important topic

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