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How to Reset Your Forgotten User Password in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: November 29, 2014

reset user password ubuntu

Lost your Ubuntu user password? Well, it’s not hard to reset your password even you’ve forgot the username and below is how to do it step by step.

1. To get started, you need to boot into Recovery Mode to get a console for running commands.

Start your machine and when you’re at the Grub boot loader, select boot with the entry says something below. You may find it under “Advanced Options for Ubuntu” option:

Ubuntu, with Linux 3.x.x … (recovery mode)

Boot recovery mode

If you don’t see the grub menu, press and hold the Shift key after you pressed the Power button to boot the computer.

2. In the Recovery Mode options list, select “root Drop to root shell prompt” and hit Enter. You should see the black and white command prompt at the end of the screen:

Recovery Mode Root Prompt

3. Now run below commands one by one:

  • First remount the file system with read & write permission: 
    mount -o rw,remount /
  • If you don’t remember the username, below command will show you: 
    ls /home
  • To change user password: 
    passwd USER_NAME_HERE

    Replace USER_NAME_HERE with your username. When it prompts, type in a new password and confirm.

The output “passwd: password updated successfully” means user password has been successfully reset.

Reset Password

Finally run command exit to back to menu (picture in step 2) and select “resume Resume normal boot” to exit Recovery Mode.

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    I'm a freelance blogger who started using Ubuntu in 2007 and wishes to share my experiences and some useful tips with Ubuntu beginners and lovers. Please comment to let me know if the tutorial is outdated! And, notify me if you find any typo/grammar/language mistakes. English is not my native language. Contact me via [email protected] Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/ubuntuhandbook1

    7 responses to How to Reset Your Forgotten User Password in Ubuntu 14.04

    1. hafuz November 28, 2014 at 4:15 pm

      Hi,
      Just a little typo:
      mount -o rw,remount /

    2. zebul666 November 29, 2014 at 5:35 pm

      this means that anyone being able to access the grub menu can change your password, right ?
      isn’t that a security hole ?

    3. venkatesh Bandari May 21, 2016 at 8:15 am

      It’s working…..Thank you….thanxx great tutorial

    4. Shital June 14, 2016 at 11:37 am

      Actually ,when I tried these step it ended up saying this user account does not exist,but it does. I want to reset my passwd but not getting way out of it.can you help me.

    5. SteveP August 3, 2016 at 6:19 pm

      Still helpful, sorted my lost password great, thanks for posting!

    6. swat February 8, 2017 at 11:42 am

      Hello kam trying all the procedure its successfully update my password..but when I again login then it does not getting entry to me. Please help.me .
      Actually I was trying for apache tomcat and because of that the password of my system get changing.. Please help me