If you've lost root credentials you can always bypass them.
https://www.tecmint.com/reset-forgotten-root-password-in-ubuntu/
When your in after this point you can reset the password to something you know then continue from there.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Thanks. I will try that when I get home from work and give you my feedback.
Wait wtf? You can just reset root password that easy? What’s even the point of having a password, if all of your data and info is so easily accessed if someone gets physical hold of the machine. I guess so software/remote hackers can’t get your stuff, but still. This seems wild to me, I dunno.
New to Linux so I’m sorry if I’m being ignorant, but it does seem crazy you can get access to a machine without the password.
Edit: Thanks for all the comments below! I guess I’ve been spoiled by BitLocker in Windows being enabled by default and not having to think of disk encryption. Appreciate everyone’s time and responses!
There needs to be some mechanism to recover your machine should this happen. It's not that much more difficult to do it on a windows machine either.
The truth of the matter is is if somebody has physical access to your machine it's not your machine anymore. They can pull out the hard drive and plug it into a machine that they have a password for and read from it if it's not encrypted. So on and so forth.
Which is why you never throw away a computer with the drives in it and you never throw drives away without physically destroying them. Don't give other people the chance to see your weird shit.
This is why encryption is important, but physical access to a device will always lead to bad things.
If an attacker has physical access then you're already screwed in most cases.
Pretty much. Even if an attacker can't boot your system, if they have physical access they can just pull your hard drive and mount it on a system they can boot. Only encryption can prevent this. Linux security was originally meant for keeping unprivileged accounts on multiuser systems from messing things up for others on the same machine. It can stretch to some other use cases, but is not a panacea for everything.
And even password based disk encryption can be defeated with 2-3 physical accesses if an organization wants to hard enough. Keyloggers can be very, very sneaky.
At that point you'd have to roll something like Yubikey-based disk encryption to be safe, because this re-establishes control over some physical parts of the system. Until they find the backup Yubikey you had to not lose all data by losing the primary key you're carrying around to maintain control over it.
It's not a battle the defending side can win.
that is unless you're running disk encryption, in which case your data (and in most cases your OS) is safe from unauthorized access, although there is not much to stop them just wiping it or running their own os on it lol
New to Linux so I’m sorry if I’m being ignorant, but it does seem crazy you can get access to a machine without the password.
This is always the case, no matter what OS you use, unless you use full-disk encryption. User credentials are all just data on a disk, so if someone has physical access to your machine, and your disk isn't encrypted, then they can access (and change) those credentials or any other data.
See also: https://ostechnix.com/reset-windows-password-with-linux-live-cd/
What’s even the point of having a password
As you say, preventing remote access is one, but also a password will slow someone down a bit, and stop low-knowledge adversaries entirely, possibly. Also you will at least know someone has messed with your machine if they change the password.
Really, though, there's nothing malicious someone can do to an unencrypted computer by changing the password that they couldn't do without changing the password (copy all your files, delete all your files, install malicious software). Except I guess annoying you by making you change your password back. 😆
Linux can do it to Windows machines too. If it’s not encrypted, USB drive is all it takes.
If it’s not encrypted, a live usb can read all the data on any machine anyway.
Account passwords have never had the purpose of protecting data from physical access - on Linux or any other operating system that I’m aware of. Physical access means an attacker can pull your drive and plug it into their computer, and no operating system can do anything to block access in that scenario, because the os on disk is not running.
You need disk encryption to protect your data. The trade off is that if you forget the encryption password, your data is unrecoverable by you. But that’s what password managers are for (or just writing it down and putting it in a safe).
I believe it's better not to pretend that an OS password is a secure protection of your data when physically access can just mean - I don't like that OS, I'm going to put on this OS instead, or indeed, I don't like this PC, I'm going to put your data in this PC instead.
Remember, most PCs can become someone else's PC just by plugging in the right USB key. In fact most Linux users will know that, having literally done this themselves.
Just as easy or easier on Windows since it has a GUI. If someone has physical access to your machine your basically screwed. Unless encrypted they could just pop the drive out and put it in another machine also. Also what is more likely for the average user someone comes in and tries to hack your password physically or something gets into your machine and someone tries remotely.
I quess if you really want to secure your device you shloud use encryption to encrypt your data and/or make something that wipes all your data in case someone tries to log into your device but that's only when you have something really important to hide.
well, a computer contains sensitive information so it should always be encrypted. Even if you think you have nothing to hide
Unix was originally a networked system that many terminals would connect to. Being able to actually reach the machine meant that you had authority.
It's the same today. If someone has physical access, the system is so screwed that you can just give total privileges anyways.
If somebody had physical access to a machine, they can get into it. If you want your data secured l, use encryption as others have suggested.
I will also offer some help...
Next time you're "testing things" set up a VM and test there. Don't test things on your primary OS/place you can't just wipe and start over.
That is a great advice. Thanks for the tip my man.
Also setting up a periodic snapshot with tools like timeshift can save your life
Already tried that yesterday and my last back up is three days old. But timeshift needs password and when I entered it. The Timeshoft said that I don't have permision to open it.
right it still require root privileges...
well if you boot from a usb key and you have a btrfs file system, you could manually restore the snapshot. this would bypass the password
If there is docker image for what you need, use docker image.
If not I would recommend systemd-nspawn, it's chroot but can run systemd init, with efforts you can run GUI applications from it too., wiping that is just sudo rm -rf.
any foss vms out there?
KVM/Qemu with Virt-Manager as GUI. There's also Virtualbox, but it's Oracle
I have fucked up somewhat like you in the past and needed to repair my system. In Linux you can boot into runlevel 1, single-user mode, where you are effectively root and can remove the root password, the re-enter one after you boot in the usual runlevel again. See these links: https://www.debuntu.org/how-to-recover-root-password-under-linux-with-single-user-mode/ https://www.debuntu.org/how-to-change-boot-runlevel-with-grub2/ https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/run-levels-linux/
Will try and give you feedback once I'm home. Thanks man.
Runlevels don't exist on systemd. multi-user.target is what you want.
you can say fuck on the internet but that's all the help im qualified to give you unless you would like for me to extol the benefits of owning a rowing machine
I’m here for the rowing machine benefits. Lay them on me, brother.
Not OP, just an admirer, but:
- If you have the cheese for a WaterRower, it’s quiet enough that you can haul ass in your studio apartment for 90 minutes without bothering your neighbors
- Rowing burns a fabulous amount of calories with the smallest possible footprint - you take up a rectangle of space for the entirety of your workout and at the end you’re still exhausted
- Full-body workout baby
- Naturally builds a functional-looking body, not too grotesque, very 3D
- As long as you keep it clean, no one will notice you’re not using your rowing machine - it’s pretty obvious when you’re not using the 32 kg kettlebell in the corner
- There are cool apps out there for rowing machines, but without the prohibitive expense of Peloton
Hnnngggg yeah this is the shit I come here for. Now just need to toss out my couch to make room in my tiny ass studio for a rowing machine.
I know I said I didn't need no rowing machine facts but I changed my mind xD Good summary.
Oh man you should get a rowing machine, I got one for Christmas and have used it for like 180 days so far and let me tell you Im getting absolutely shredded. My beer belly has turned into shoulder and chest and bicep muscle and is now totally gone. My torso is like an inverted triangle, my lats are poppin, i got like dimples in my shoulders now above my armpit, shit's wild.
The key is doing it like every day and turning up the resistance if it gets easy. Also stretch a lot and look up what you're doing so you don't hurt yourself
I'm kinda used to people being sensitive even to the most minor of profanities but If it's alright I won't fucking hold back. I'm not intersted in rowing machines right now but thanks anyway.
I'm not intersted in rowing machines
Okay well they'll still be there when you decide you wanna get jacked 
Basically same method Saik0 posred later on. Will try that when I'm home and give my feedback. Thanks.
Are you trying the terminal commands with sudo?
You could also try logging in as root user with the password you used during setup.
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One of my favorites has always been “sudo passwd”, which works for some reason
I might try that later on.
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