I forgot my account password for an Ubuntu 8.10 server and found this procedure to log in and change it:

Turn your computer on.
Press ESC at the grub prompt.
Press e for edit.
Highlight the line that begins kernel ………, press e
Go to the very end of the line, add rw init=/bin/bash
press enter, then press b to boot your system.
Your system will boot up to a passwordless root shell.
Type in passwd username
Set your password.

This did what I wanted it to do, but I found out that afterward I no longer neede to sudo into commands that previously required it. The changes descibed above did not appear in successive reboots, but I'm baffled at what change occurred that changed the system behavior. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

when you did that you were logged in as root and thats why you did not have to do sudo.

That should only be used for password recovery and then reboot and login regularly.

Hmmmm...

The problem seemed to persist through a few reboots, then returned to normal (whatever that is).

Maybe I shouldn't buy my liquor at the hardware store.

Thanks for the response.

Alex