Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS. Have forgotten my login PW so have attempted to change it following these directions https://itsfoss.com/how-to-hack-ubuntu-password/

Boot into recovery mode
Get into shell prompt
$ mount -rw -o remount /
$ passwd jim
$ new password
$ new password
$ exit
Then booted normally. However it didn't work. My new pw that is.

Am I at least correct in assuming my username is correct?



What should I try next? Any feedback welcome!

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If user jim did not exist on this PC, you would have seen an error message when trying to change the password.

Perhaps your keyboard layout is different in recovery mode than in graphics mode. Try a very simple password such as "aaaa" (as superuser, you can set passwords that would normally not be accepted due to lack of complexity) that is not affected by layouts.

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So I assume my issue is disk space. I logged into text terminal and freed up some space in /home but still showing 100% usage in / (root)

What is the safest way to free up space in root from the text terminal?

First, find out where the space is used up. In your case, /home seems to be a separate filesystem (quite common), so that removing files from there doesn't help.

To see how much space is used by the various directories on the root file system, you can run the command du -sx /*. The -s option generates a summary, the -x option prevents from reporting space on other filesystems.

After that, analyze the filesystems with the largest space usage until you find a directory from where it is safe to remove files and that occupies a good chunk.

If you need help with that, start by sharing the output of that command.

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Thanks! Turns out I simply needed to get into trash in root user and delete some of the files.

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FYI: root should never have trash so this tells me a graphical session is being used as root or no? I would advise against ever using a graphical session as root but it's your call.

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