2009/6/2 mike daniels <[email protected]>: > Have not knowingly reset anything, the root password request follows when I > select route shell, followed by enter. I dont have any files currently on > the Ubuntu machine, so a reload is not a problem. Why the machine rejected > my username and password may well remain an unsolved mystery. It does appear > to be loss of both username and password that is causing the problem. Maybe > understandable as it would be a major security issue if an Ubuntu 8.04 > machine could be accessed easily by unauthorised users. Looks like a > recheck, then reload, thanks for your input Sean, much appreciated.
I don't know why you're being prompted to enter a root password. Did you install ubuntu yourself? Two other things come to mind. Firstly, it's not a security issue to be able to bypass the username/password set up on the computer. Give someone physical access to a machine and a live cd, and they can access everything on your computer regardless of whether it's running Window, Mac OS X or Linux. If you're particularly worried about this look into encryption (Ubuntu can give you the option to encrypt a 'Private' directory and in future your whole home directory easily). Secondly, I assume that you were getting the original message because you needed to run a manual fsck on your hard drive after the automatic one failed. You can do this via a live cd (bypassing the username/password issue) and I found the following post which may help, but if as you say you have no important files on the machine a reinstall may be easier (less interesting though): >From https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/29889 "Here is a link to instructions for running fsck from an Ubuntu live CD (the last post on the 2nd page is probably most helpful): http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=422307 This page discusses mount: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount You can use fstab to figure out which device refers to your Ubuntu partition: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab In your case it probably is: /dev/hda1" -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
