I have no idea how this happened but I have lost (or something changed) my login passwords for 19.1 and 19.2. Yes I wrote them down but they aren't working now and all the ideas I've read and tried are not working (init=/bin/bash then F10 only returns me to the boot screen not a terminal) Has anyone found a way to get around this? I could just reinstall and lose everything and not learn anything but I prefer to learn my way around this problem. Thank you in advance for your time and effort on this.

Thank you Paul

What you need to learn is to boot live media and use it to chroot your installed system. A successful chroot will enable use of the passwd command to set a new password. I've never tried this with Mint, so cannot provide all required details, which you should be able to find many of with a web search. The instructions for openSUSE are on https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Recover_root_password which I just used two hours ago, but a normal Mint installation has no root user configured, and I don't know whether this would make a difference that matters.

Hi,

can you confirm that this is not caused by some change in the keyboard layout? Switching between US and JP layouts causes me all sorts of fun when typing passwords with !@#$%^&* etc.

Failing that, have you already tried the old trick of booting to some live media, mounting the partition that contains /etc/ and deleting the password hashes in /etc/shadow?

Evo2.

You have found the possible fault.
Changing the keyboard can and does cause this problem with me it is US to UK keyboard.

There's an easy way to test for keyboard problems with passwords. Just enter the password where your login name would normally go. It won't get you in of course, but you'll be able to see the password string the system sees and compare it with what you thought you'd typed.

3 members found this post helpful.

I tried the keyboard problem. I also tried editing the shadow file, I have used the live CD approach also. The only thing that worked was at some point I was able to actually log into one of them with ctl-alt-F1 and change the password for it, the other two are still unusable. I guess I will move the data and reinstall them. This all began because I had a 2TB drive I wanted to partition into three parts, install 19.1 on 1/3, 19.2 on 1/3 and leave 1/3 for data. It could be that the way I went about it had something to so with this chaos. How should I have done that properly? Any advice would be gratefully accepted. Thank you all for your time and patience with this old man.

I'm not sure why you would want 19.1 and 19.2 on the same drive but that's your choice. If it is a 2TB drive use gdisk or GParted to do the partitioning. GParted manual is at the link below.

https://gparted.org/display-doc.php%...%3Dhelp-manual

If this is going to be an EFI install of both, you will likely need to create the EFI partition during the install. Installing the 2nd Mint on the same drive will overwrite the Grub EFI files on the EFI partition in the 'ubuntu' directory so make sure your install runs sudo update-grub at the end or reboot and do it. See the link below.

ttps://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/efi.html

I tired Mmazda method and I cna't get it to work I either get not in fsatb error or some error about LVM system so can't chroot. I managed to get there the other night but deleted too much in the shadow file. BTW the reason I have 19.1 and 19.2 on the same machine was when I tried to upgrade 19.1 it went sour so I installed 19.2 by itself. Any other suggestions beside re-install, like I said I want to learn to solve this problem not just reinstall every time I have a problem. Thank again for any and all help

I have no experience with editing /etc/shadow, which could have complicated your problem. You could try searching for chroot instructions specifically directed to Mint or Ubuntu users and try again, since Mint and Ubuntu installations normally do not have a root password set.

These are the things I have tried so far, if I try to edit the main menu and add init= //bin/bash then press f10 it goes write back to the boot menu. And as you can see i have tried a long of ideas and still no sucess. I'm really lost on this one, anyone?






219 mkdir testplace
220 ;s
221 ls
222 cd..
223 cd.
224 cd /
225 sudo mnt /sdb WORKS/testplace
226 sudo mount /sdb1/ WORKS/testplace
227 sudo mount /sdb1/ /WORKS/testplace
228 sudo mount /sdb/ /WORKS/testplace
229 sudo mount /sdb
230 sudo mount /sdb1/
231 sudo chroot /sdb1/
232 sudo chroot /sdb/
233 chroot sdb/etc/
234 chroot sdb1/etc/
235 sudo mount sdc1/
236 chroot to sdc1
237 chroot to /sdc1
238 mount sdc
239 mount /sdc/
240 mount /sdc1/
241 sudo mount /sdc/
242 sudo mount /sdc1/
243 sudo mount /sdc1/etc/
244 cd sdb
245 cd sdb/
246 cd sdb1
247 cd sdb1/
248 sudo cd sdb
249 /sdb/ /
250 sudo /sdb/ /
251 sudo /sdb/etc/
252 sudo cd /sdb/etc/
253 sudo mount /sdb/etc/
254 mount sdb
255 mount /sdb
256 mount /sdb1/
257 mount /sdb1
258 mount /sdb
259 mount mint19.1 /etc
260 sodo mount mint19.1 /etc
261 sudo mount mint19.1 /etc
262 sudo mount mint19.1/etc
263 cd WORK
264 WORK
265 cd /home/;pau/WORK
266 cd /home/paul/WORK
267 ls-a
268 ls -a
269 mkdir /testplace/mnt
270 cd testplace
271 mkdir mnt
272 ls -a
273 cd.
274 WORK
275 cd testplaces
276 cd WORK
277 cd..
278 cd.
279 cd .
280 cd WORK
281 cd
282 pwd
283 ls -a
284 sudo mount sdb /WORK/testplaces/mnt
285 sudo mount -o,rw /dev/home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt
286 sudo mount -o,rw /dev/home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
287 sudo mount -o,rw /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
288 sudo mount -o,rw /home/paul/WORK/testplace /mnt
289 sudo mount -o,rw /home/paul/WORK/testplace/mnt
290 sudo mount -o remount,rw /home/paul/WORK/testplace/mnt
291 sudo mount /sdb1/ ,rw /home/paul/WORK/testplace/mnt
292 mount --help
293 mount -l
294 mount --help
295 sudo mount -w /sdb1/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
296 sudo mount --rw /sdb1/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt-rw
297 sudo mount -w /sdb1/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
298 sudo mount --r,w /sdb1/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
299 sudo mount --rw, /sdb1/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
300 sudo mount --rw, sdb1/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
301 sudo mount -rw, sdb1/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
302 sudo mount -rw, device sdb1/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
303 sudo mount -rw, device sdb/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
304 sudo mount --rw device sdb/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
305 sudo mount -rw device sdb/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
306 sudo mount -w device sdb/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
307 sudo mount -w device /sdb /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
308 sudo mount -rw, sdb1/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
309 sudo mount, -rw sdb1/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
310 sudo mount -rw sdb1/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
311 sudo mount -rw device sdb/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
312 sudo mount -rw device /sdc/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
313 sudo mount -rw, device /sdc/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
314 sudo mount -rw device /sdc2/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
315 sudo mount -rw /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
316 sudo mount --rw /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
317 sudo mount --rw, /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
318 sudo mount --rw, /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
319 sudo mount -rw, /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
320 sudo mount -w, /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
321 sudo mount rw, /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
322 sudo mount -rw, /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
323 sudo mount -rw /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces /mnt
324 sudo mount rw, /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt
325 sudo mount rw, /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt
326 sudo mount, rw /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt
327 sudo mount,rw /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt
328 sudo mount rw /sdc2 /home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt
329 sudo mount rw /sdc/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt
330 sudo mount, rw /sdc/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt
331 sudo mount -w, /sdc/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt
332 sudo mount -w, /sdc/ /home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt
333 chroot /home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt
334 dir
335 cd /home/paul/WORK/testplaces/mnt

Does booting GRUB to the "system restore" not work any more? Obviously, if things are encrypted, nothing will work. But I thought GRUB allowed a recovery mode where passwords could be changed?

I finally got into one version of 19.2, now I am trying to back up my data and just start over from the beginning however I cannot write to the backup disk. It says I don't ahve permission, the backup disk belongs to root. I can't change permissions on the Backup disk? I have tried using chmod, no luck. tried to run Dolphin and Thunar as admin, nothing seems to work. Any and all help would be appreciated.. Also what is the proper way to format and partition the 1.8 GB drive into three partitions. thank you again for your time and advice.

You would need to sudo to use chmod but, before all that, can you accurately describe where you data is on the drive(s) you have?

You would need to sudo to use chmod but, before all that, can you accurately describe where you data is on the drive(s) you have?