Forgot my Username and Password on Arch
 

Its been since October since I accessed my Arch OS, due to a career and geographical move. Since that time I forgot my username and password (including root).

My question is, is there a way to get around it without starting from scratch? Oh yeah, my backup live CD is 700 miles away! lol I can only guess what the answer is going to be........start over!?

Any help would be great.


Shaun

insert your install disk.

drop to command line..

check the partition of your installed box.

make a dir

mount your box in that dir.
check /etc/passwd
look for your username/login
then issue passwd to reset

Unfortunately the only thing I can suggest is ...yup you guessed it start fresh. There is a problem in the forum giving out that kind of help as (don't take this the wrong way )we really don't know if it is your computer or if you are trying to hack into someone else's...Therein lies the dilemma.

Actually, you don't have to start fresh. I assume you are using grub as you bootloader. Do the following:
When at the kernel selection, go into edit mode and append
to the line that starts with linux.
Continue booting and you will eventually be dropped to a shell. Type
to allow write access to your root filesystem. Then, a simple
will let you change your login password for the user <username>, without knowledge of the old pw. Also worsk for root, of course.
Reboot and you will be able to login again.

@tiredofbilkyyaforallican:
I don't see any violation of the forum guidelines here. The information I posted is available throughout the internet in numerous places. Neither do I encourge or empower anyone to do anything illegal. Since smturner1 obviously has physical access to the machine in question, I assume he gained it in a legitimate way. So holding back this information, just because there is the remote chance that he uses it to cause mieschief doesn't seem acceptably to me.

I get around the issue by using the same user/password - I do a lot of installs, and making them all different would be a nightmare.
There are exceptions, but they're the minority, and easy(er) to remember.

hehe ++1 i always use the same password and user on all my accounts and all my OS installs :)

When I setup systems I record passwords in safe place, Now I can't think of anymore passwords to use, I guess I'll go green and RECYCLE.