Translations by Samir Ribić

If you have an encrypted home directory, you will not be able to reset a forgotten password.

If you simply want to change your password, see <link xref="user-changepassword"/>.

Reset password using Grub

Restart your computer, and hold down <key>Shift</key> during bootup to get into the Grub menu.

If you are unable to get into the Grub boot menu, and therefore cannot choose to boot into recovery mode, you can <link xref="user-forgottenpassword#live-cd">use a live CD to reset your user password</link>.

Your computer will now begin the boot process. After a few moments, a <gui>Recovery Menu</gui> will appear. Use your down arrow key to highlight <gui>root</gui> and press <key>Enter</key>.

At the <cmd>#</cmd> symbol, type:

<cmd>passwd <var>username</var></cmd>, where <var>username</var> is the username of the account you're changing the password for.

You will be prompted to enter a new UNIX password, and to confirm the new password.

Then type:

Mount your drive.

Type <cmd>gksu nautilus</cmd> to launch the file manager with system-wide privileges.

Within the drive you just mounted, you can check that it is the right drive by clicking <gui> home </gui> and then your username.

Locate the 'shadow' file and make a backup copy:

Right-click on the shadow file and select <gui>copy</gui>.

Then right-click in the empty space and select <gui>paste</gui>.

<link xref="files-rename">Rename</link> the backup "shadow.bak".

Edit the original "shadow" file with a text editor.

Find your username for which you have forgotten the password. It should look something like this (the characters after the colon will be different):

username:$1$2abCd0E or

username:$1$2abCd0E:13721a:0:99999:7:::

Delete the characters after the first colon and before the second colon. This will remove the password for the account.

Save the file, exit out of everything and reboot your computer without the live CD or USB.

For <gui>Current password</gui> do not enter anything, as your current password is blank. Just click <gui>Authenticate</gui> and enter a new password.

This will delete all your saved passwords for wireless networks, instant messaging accounts, etc. Only do this if you can't remember the password you used for your keyring.

Press <keyseq><key>Ctrl</key><key>h</key></keyseq> (or click <guiseq><gui>View</gui><gui>Show Hidden Files</gui></guiseq>.)

Delete any files you find in the keyrings folder.

Restart the computer.

After you restart and log in you will be asked to enter your wireless networks password.

Use longer, more complicated passwords.

Choose a secure password

Make your passwords easy enough for you to remember, but very difficult for others (including computer programs) to guess.

Choosing a good password will help to keep your computer safe. If your password is easy to guess, someone may figure it out and gain access to your personal information.

People could even use computers to systematically try to guess your password, so even one that would be difficult for a human to guess might be extremely easy for a computer program to crack. Here are some tips for choosing a good password:

Use a mixture of upper-case and lower-case letters, numbers, symbols and spaces in the password. This makes it more difficult to guess; there are more symbols to choose from, so more possible passwords that someone would have to check when trying to guess yours.

A good method for choosing a password is to take the first letter of each word in a phrase that you can remember. The phrase could be the name of a movie, a book, a song or an album. For example, "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" would become F:ARoMD or faromd or f: aromd.

Make your password as long as possible. The more characters it contains, the longer it should take for a person or computer to guess it.

Do not use any words that appear in a standard dictionary in any language. Password crackers will try these first. The most common password is "password" -- people can guess passwords like this very quickly!

Do not use any personal information such as a date, license plate number, or any family member's name.

Choose a password that can be typed quickly, to decrease the chances of someone being able to make out what you have typed if they happen to be watching you.

Never write your passwords down anywhere. They can be easily found!

Use different passwords for different things.

Use different passwords for different accounts.

If you use the same password for all of your accounts, anyone who guesses it will be able to access all of your accounts immediately.

You might not have the right codecs installed, or the DVD might be the wrong region.

If you insert a DVD into your computer and it doesn't play, you may not have the right DVD <em>codecs</em> installed, or the DVD might be from a different <em>region</em>.