hit that F10!

I pressed f10 and now I am at a screen that says as follows:

Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D to continue):

What do I do now

Need other's advice, but I think we may have to re-do with init=/bin/bash (instead of single)
... darn security... See: https://mintguide.org/system/248-res...inux-mint.html
(try changing the ro to rw, to maybe avoid needing: mount -o remount,rw /)

I must of typed somthing wrong because it says the Target filesystem doesn't have requested /vin/bash.

Control-Alt-Delete does not work. How do I get back to the grub screen

it's bin... hold down power for 10 seconds...
Back in #8, in that link, could you 'drop to root shell', typein: mount -o remount,rw /
? If so, then find username by `ls /home` or at end of: cat /etc/passwd

fyi, I'll be gone for a couple hours.... (maybe others will drop by)

Ok, I typed it right this time and I got this screen:

bash: cannot set terminal process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device
bash: no job control in this shell
dircolors: no SHELL environment variable, and no shell type option given
(none) / #

From those prior links:
mount -o remount,rw /
passwd <username>
(unless you know it from login screens, find username by `ls /home` or at end of: cat /etc/passwd)

p.s. thanks for the detailed info on what it says! (many Newbies aren't so diligent)

Remember that I could not type anything in recovery mode.

Also do not expect any responses from me until around 3-4 pm EST time tomorrow as I need to sleep and go to school

in #36, is it 'alive'? meaning: can you hit enter and get another # prompt?
If so, you're a couple lines from done!
Never any hurry tho! Take care of 'life'! Hope you enjoy Linux (despite it's 'puzzles')

That looks good - by "end of line" people mean type a couple of space characters after the last non-space character, then type single then press enter.
You cannot damage anything.

Boot using the amended line.

roadgeek01,

If you are ready for a new learning curve, I can suggest an alternative route, namely to install a lightweight Linux distribution such as antiX-16:
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Distrowatch link:
https://distrowatch.com/?newsid=09456

On another PC, download and burn the antix-16_386-full.iso (bottom of the next link page) image to a DVD:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/ant...inal/antiX-16/

Boot from the DVD, following this video:

Installing antiX-16:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_uo...ature=youtu.be

Do bear in mind that your Dell 1300 is an old, low-powered machine, plus it almost certainly has a problematical *Broadcom wifi card, so you MAY need to refer this “sticky” by frankbell:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ux-4175434970/

*Hopefully antiX-16 will automatically deal with this problem.

Other links:
https://mikewilliamson.wordpress.com...inspiron-1300/

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/top...inspiron-1300/

Good luck.

1 members found this post helpful.

I am back! If I press enter another prompt as follows appears:

(none) / #

Try typing the command (note that ls is the lower case version of LS).
Any name(s) listed should be user names (hopefully not disabled user names).

You cannot view a password, but you can set new passwords. Enterwhere username is one of the users obtained previously.
You will be prompted to enter the new password (twice)
Anything typed will not show (for security reasons).

When I type passwd username it tells me this:
passwd: use 'username' does not exist
What do I do?

Remember the earlier concept of: "what was the name on that login screen?"
You might see it from the `ls /home` or tail /etc/passwd
When you login to gmail, you do NOT type the 8letter word username! You type marydoe!

What's happening is: you are believing [semi-correctly] that
Linux is a bizarre tech obscurity, when it's really not that bad, once you get the 'hang' of it!
Again, don't be discouraged (no matter what happens)! Hope you have 'think skin', just in case..

ok? ttyl... (going out for an hour or 2) READ them webpages