Can a grub password be changed ?
I like the fact that grub wants a password. Makes me think twice about which OS I'm booting into; like "Are you sure ?" in another infamous OS.
After installing several old hard drives into usb-connected cases as well as setting up several desktop PC's, I'm faced with a long list of grub passwords which get mixed up in my head. Life would be so much simpler if I simply changed all those different grub passwords into a simple common password.
I know that I can get rid of grub's password requirement my deleting or commenting out the "echo password grub #####" line in /etc.grub.d/01_PASSWORD file, but does that line link to another place in the OS that has to match ##### ?
I don't think so - GRUB doesn't really control anything in the OS (actually it's controlled by the OS - it simply releases all control once an OS starts to boot).
EDIT: Actually what I meant to say was YES you can change it but no it won't affect anything in the actual OS.
Sure go ahead and change it.
Just edit the password with 'sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/01_PASSWORD' (you can choose your favorite text editor instead of gedit). After saving the file, execute 'sudo update-grub' for the change to be effective.
> sudo gedit
It's best to categorically use gksudo for graphical apps and reserve sudo for cli only. We've seen many a people here having issues because of messed up permissions.
(yes, some graphical apps will work just fine with sudo but it's a bit of a russian roulette)
I am a translator!
I have been using only sudo for all the graphical applications on many distros and I have never ever had a single issue..
Followup: I followed Magic Banana's straightforward instructions and yes, One can change grub's password, but yagotta remember to run sudo update-grub[2] for the change to take effect. Note: [2]: My 01_PASSWORD file says to run [sudo] update-grub2. I think that elsewhere it came out that it doesn't make any difference because Trisquel knows what we mean ...
informative post for me .
I went ahead and made a common grub password for various PC's that I'm keeping up to date.
Bear in mind that the "sudo update-grub2" writes grub's data onto the "master boot record" (or the trisquel equivalent) of the hard drive that's in use when you execute the command. I had to pay attention to that with the two external USB-connected hard drives that I'm using with my Lenovo T420 notebook. On my Micro Center Power Spec dual-boot Ubuntu/Tisquel 7 desktop, updating the grub password with Trisquel (the second OS) also made the same grub password work to start Ubuntu.
That said, if you disconnect the USB-connected external hard drives on my laptop, there's yet another grub installation to be "set" on the internal hard drive.