Any IT helpdesk worker will tell you that the most common issue they deal with on a Monday morning is users who have forgotten their passwords over the weekend. So what do you do when you forget your password and can’t log on to your webbook? (or for that matter another user of your webbook forgets their password) Don’t worry, all is not lost, and this is a great time to introduce you to the recovery console.
When your webbook switches on you will see the webbook logo for a second or two as the BIOS gets ready to start up the system. Just after this, hit the escape key and you should end up at a menu like this:
Don’t worry if you miss it, just switch off and try again.
Go down to the second option in the list, this should end with (recovery mode) and press return.
You will then be treated to lots of weird and wonderful messages flying past as you see it boot up. Those messages are normally hidden by the Ubuntu startup screen.
Eventually you end up at this blue screen (not a blue screen of death, but a blue screen of salvation!)
Select the option to “Drop to a root shell prompt”
At the bottom of the screen you should see a little # prompt and a flashing cursor. You are now at a command line with superuser powers. Try typing
ls /home
this should give you a list of people with home directories. Lets say one of them is “alan”. To change the password for this user type
passwd alan
and provide a new password.
Once you are happy that you have a username and password that you can use type
exit
to continue starting up the webbook, you can then log in with your new password.
Other commands you might want to use at the recovery console include
deluser –remove-home alan
this deletes the user called alan, plus the home directory and all contents. Use with caution!
oem-config-prepare
Once you have deleted all the users you can run this command to reset the webbook to the first user wizard. This means that the next time it is turned on it will ask for a username and location etc. You might want to do this if you are giving your webbook to someone else.
Hi Alan,
Nice site btw, very useful for Linux Newbies like myself with a webbook :>
I recently purchased a second hand webbook running Ubuntu. I am keen to keep Ubuntu so I folowed your reset instructions to remove any user accounts as above and ran the first user wizard fine.
I can log on and my webbook works fine but I have a few quirks / problems which I hope you can help with.
One, I am unable to change the desktop from a Geeksquad logo!! I right click my desktop – change desktop background, but no matter what I do the geeksquad logo background wont change. Even if I click one of the stock backgrounds or add my own picture?
I also ran System – Preferences – Apperance – Background. Still unable to change the background
I also attempted your wifi led fix, but despite putting “gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/options” and entering my password I am unable to save this file? The save option is greyed out and I get the message “Saving has been disabled by the system administrator”
I even added a password to the root account, logged in as root and tried to edit the options file, but I got the same message!!!
I’m new to linux so lost as what to try next? Any ideas?
Is it possible to download the webbooks Ubuntu software and do a proper fresh install from a usb stick / sd card??
Cheers
Chris
Hi Chris,
that is a really really odd error message to get from Gedit. I have never seen it myself but it is not quite unprecedented as this thread shows. The geeksquad logo is just an icon on the desktop, not part of the desktop background itself. You should be able to just drag it to the trash if you don’t want it. If you have a USB CDROM drive then you can reinstall Ubuntu, however you do need to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to tell it you have a 1024×600 screen rather than 1024×768. We are working on a restore option based on an SD card or perhaps a USB stick (the Wristvault rubber bracelet thing) but we really really want to get the really good 3d graphics drivers on the restore media and we are still waiting for these to be packaged correctly.
Thanks so much! you saved me hours of heartache!
Hi Alan,
Thanks for the above reply.
I am still unable to delete the geeksquad background. If I drag it the trash bin it moves back out!!!
In the end I built myself a bootable SD card with Ubuntu 8.04. However I’m having a problem installing, I think cos of the display res you allude to above
I install from the SD card but just get a blank screen.
I press Ctl-Alt-F1 to get to a prompt. Here I overwrote the etc/X11/xorg.conf file with one I copied from my current working installation that I had placed on the SD card (is this a good thing to do??!)
I then ran “sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg” but if I go back to the xserver via Ctl-Alt-F7 still blank, but can hear the ubuntu start up sound!!!
I am really new to Linux so kinda winging it, so forgive if I’m asking newbie questions, but how to I restart the xserver after changing the xorg.conf?
And is copying the original installtion xorg.conf a good idea?!!
Please advise, as I am really keen to get myself using linux as a replacement for my current vista laptop
Cheers
Chris
well done on creating the bootable SD card and working out the bios settings to boot from it! They are a bit quirky. Copying the original xorg.conf is a good thing. Running sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg overwrites xorg.conf and undoes your changes! Copy it over again and restart the webbook, or press ctrl+alt+F7 to go to the graphical console and then press ctrl+alt+backspace to restart X.
Hi Alan,
worked like a charm, copied xorg.conf and ctl-alt-F7 followed by a litle ctl-alt-backspace. Raised a few eybrows in my office this morning as I began puching the air in celabration :>
Now I can change background!! I also managed to edit the etc/modprobe.d/options file, happy days.
I know you packed the original webbook with some useful apps, anything you reccomend adding to my default 8.04 install?
And now for a night spent happy, exploring my new Ubuntu installation (complete with new 9.99 pounds 1 gb stick of RAM!)
Many thanks for all your help with this and keep up the good work with the webbookblog
Chris
Well done! If you have kids then they will love Tuxpaint (we did customise the config file for tuxpaint to let it run fullscreen – I will do an article on adding our custom elonex-config package). Planner is quite impressively good value if you like doing serious project plans and Gantt charts. Gnucash is handy to keep track of personal finance or a smallish business.
[...] The above bit doesn’t work when the OpenChrome drivers are actually running, but it works find if X is broken, or if you have the VIA drivers running. When you power up the webbook go to the grub menu and select the recovery option and go to a root shell. [...]
Thanks a lot for this, just found this site from a random google search, bought a second hand webook and it still had the old username and pass on it. Now I can logon fine!
Thanks again!
Matt
Hi Alan,
Can you yell me the keystrokes to get into the recovery process (if there is one)
Thanks
Noel
@Noel, there is no recovery image on the hard drive for several reasons, one of which was that we figured that most people breaking the operating system would also be breaking their master boot record by having a go at installing a different distro of Linux or even Windows. There is a recovery image I made that fits on a 1GB USB drive, I am not sure how that is being distributed right now.
Dear Alan,
Thank you! Having managed to forget both my user name and my password (doh!), I spent a very long time last night trying every possible permutation I could think of.
I am so grateful to have been able to reset it this morning through following your clear and helpful instructions.
Best wishes,
Betty Hagglund
i have 2 gb sd card
i have forgot its password
what can i do for it?
HI Alan
Done the usual thing and lost both name and password
I followed your instructions to get into root shell command, but then get give root password or type ctr-d to continue
No doubt not the first time you have heard of this one!
Any advice welcome
Regards
Geoff Griffiths
nice one mate!! I have done all of the prompts from your “How to”and got to a position with screen saying Enter new UNIX password but nothing works on they keyboard commands, wonder if you can help
you should just be able to type in the password there, it won’t display on screen as you type, nor will it do *** or anything like that, but it is working.
Hi Alan,
I’m having a bit of trouble with my webbook…
when I turn it on it all starts fine and I’m able to access recovery menus e.t.c but as soon as it gets to the login screen it all goes black! obviously the screen isn’t broken cause I can see everything prior to log in, do you have any idea what could be causing this and how I might fix it?? it was working fine the last time I logged in :s
any help would be massively appreciated!