Lost admin password on my libiquity taurinus x2000 with trisquel
As the title says I lost my admin password and am locked out, I've read through this thread https://trisquel.info/en/forum/locked-out-admin-log
Since I bought this computer with trisquel installed on it as well as libreboot I'm not sure if the same process in the posts mentioned above is way to go. I tried creating the live USB through startup disk creator while logged in as guest but get a error message no permissions to erase disk and the make disk button is not active. It could be the USB stick I used, I was able to format it but it has a partition I couldn't erase so will try a new USB stick and see if it works.
I don't have any data saved under admin so if there is a easier way to reset this thing I don't care if that admin account is lost. I just want to make sure I don't mess up how its configured with libreboot and I am pretty new to Linux which is why I get this system preconfigured.
Any help is appreciated, I need this thing to work so I can work ; )
Mahalo
I am a translator!
>x2000
>Linux
Oh well..
Yeah follow the thread. I want a RYFM X20000 too :)
It's a beautiful system, especially when I'm not locked out of it. I was hesitant about fully switching to a free life so. Kept my MacBook for a while and just sold it last week to go full freedom full Time but forgot to decrypt my passwords that I had stored on my MacBook before I formatted it. Now I'm just a guest to freedom : (
d
I followed this https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/how-create-liveusb
and keep getting a failed to install message. not sure what i'm doing wrong
I am a translator!
You don't need GUI for this. Actually GUIs in my experience are terrible with it.
Insert the fat32 formatted USB stick in your laptop and open the terminal and follow this:
lsblk
look up and note the name assigned to your usb stick. sba is usually your hard drive, it will be either sdb or sdc. For the arguments, or better yet, example's sake, say your stick is sdb. For the same reason say your Trisquel ISO is in ~/Downloads/
To write the ISO on your stick all you need is one single command, one that has never ever failed me on any hardware and with any ISO:
sudo dd if=~/Downloads/Trisquel_ISO.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M ; sync
Tried this, says unable to change root gid: operation not permitted
Is this because I'm signed in as guest?
Thanks for your help.
You can create a live CD/DVD/USB (with GNU/Linux on it, whatever the distribution) from another system (even from Windows or MacOS) too.
So nothing I tried was working from my guest account in trisquel so I made a live USB on a windows computer and reinstalled trisquel on my x200 now I am in control of my computer but lost libreboot when I reinstalled trisquel.
So I guess I need to reconfigure libreboot now and should be good?
You did not have to reinstall the operating system. To change a password (not knowing the current one) using a live system, you could have followed the instructions I gave in the post you linked to at the beginning of this thread: https://trisquel.info/en/forum/locked-out-admin-log#comment-105213
Super confused, is libreboot still on my system somewhere or do I need to download it and install. How do I see what bios is running after new installation of trisquel
I am a translator!
The reinstallation of the OS should not change your low level firmware. Your PC is still librebooted, mate.
For doubts related to libreboot, try their Irc channel on freenode.
I'm just not sure where to start since it was already flashed with libreboot I'm not sure which installation instructions to follow on libreboot website. Yes I'm supernoob,
When you start your computer does it a screen briefly pop up that looks like the image I attached? If so, Libreboot is still installed. If this isn't the case, Libreboot wasn't even installed on your computer in the first place.
The boot menu flashes but doesn't have that graphic on it just black background, does that matter?
Cool, looks like I'm all good. Thanks, turns out to have been a good thing to go through this because I was able to setup disk encryption when I reinstalled trisquel and got to meet you fine folks. Now on to further learning and enjoying the free life.
Peace!!
Hi, are you the same person who emailed me earlier? Regardless, someone emailed me today with the exact same question about how to recover access to their user account.
I'll paste what I emailed to that person:
If it isn't encrypted, then you could do this:
boot a live USB distro (e.g. trisquel)
mount the OS drive
edit /etc/shadow:
Make your entry in there look something like this:
koude::::
(koude is the username is this example. it's the dutch word for "cold")
edit /etc/passwd
Your entry will look something like:
koude:x:1007:1007::/home/koude:
Change it to:
koude::1007:1007::/home/koude:
(I removed the "x")
then boot up the system, but with this kernel parameter added:
init=/bin/bash
Then you have a root shell at boot.
You can then do:
passwd yourusername
You can do this on any user account on a GNU+Linux system. This will
completely remove your password. Then you can reset it to whatever you
like.
NOTE: Trisquel has no root account by default. To enable the root
account (during normal operation) you can simply set a passwd:
passwd root
This ought to work. I've used this to break into my systems from time
to time, when I forget my password.
Setting /etc/shadow and removing the x in /etc/passwd removes the password entirely, so after that it should be possible to even boot normally (even without init=/bin/bash), log in without a password, and then you can just set another password.
This also works on encrypted systems, in the situation where you know how to decrypt the drive but you lost your password to your user account, and you have the ability to mount the root file system and edit those 2 files.
Is there something wrong with https://trisquel.info/forum/locked-out-admin-log#comment-105213 i.e. with 'chroot'ing the root partition and simply running 'passwd koude'? That looks easier and less prone to error.
good old chroot
i always forget about that
that's probably a better/easier way
Yes that was me, thanks again
by the way, if your X200 is from libiquity, make sure to update to the latest upstream libreboot from libreboot.org. someone emailed me recently and they had a very old version of libreboot on their laptop from that company, which reset their clock to 1970 on newer linux kernels; newer versions of libreboot fix this, and other issues.