Fedora 10 – Forgot User Password
Posted Feb 20th, 2009 by ConorToday I did one of the stupidest things that I have done in a long time – I forgot my user password for my Fedora 10 installation. I don’t know how it happened… I just decided to change my password because I thought that it was to weak. It used to be “conor” which is about anyone’s first possible guess given that my username is Conor! Anyway I changed the password and continued working away. Later on when I went to log in again I thought “Oh Shit!”.
I sat there for like two hours trying to remember the password and eventually realised that it wasn’t going to happen. Then I began to think of alternative methods of getting in. I had one advantage over people who are actually trying to hack into the computer – I knew the root/super user password. This proved to be the thing that saved me in the end! But unfortunately Fedora, with good reason, does not allow root login through GUI so the task is made harder again.
After looking online for solutions to no avail I began to recall my Fedora installation. You see when I installed the OS initially it rejected my graphics card and would not boot into GUI. Then it dawned on me – If I could get into that state again (init 3) I could log in as root from there, start the GUI and eventually reset my password. But how the heck to do that!
It’s easy really once you make it clear in your head what your about to do. We’ll start from the beginning:
- Turn on your computer.
- Keep pressing the “p” key until something happens.
- If you have a grub password enter it at this point.
- You should see a list of kernels. Select which one you want to boot with (usually the first one) and press the “e” key.
- Go to the line that begins with “kernel /vmlinuz**” and press the “e” key again.
- At the end of that line add this text (without the quotes): “init 3″
- Press enter.
- Press the “b” key.
- You should now be in a command line interface. Login in as root (su -) and then type “startx”.
- You will now boot into the GUI logged in as root. Go to System > Administration > Users and Groups
- Edit your user details.
- Restart and login as normal!
It took me a while to figure out how to do this but it worked out alright in the end. Hope that this posts helps other people in the same situation – I wish someone had spelled this out for me! 
even easier:
1. start computer
2. when Grub comes up, press ‘e’ to edit kernel line
3. add ‘single’ to end of line and press enter
4. ‘b’ to boot
5. you’re in to single-user mode, /without/ needing a password.
6. ‘passwd conor’ to change your password.
7. ‘reboot’
That’s crazy, how can you change the password without needing any verification? Does that mean that anyone could easily hack into my computer using that method?
I think that method is very old redhat method, i ever use that method when i use redhat 7 and it work. chears
not working for me.
i did the same thing kernel/vmlinuz thing and proceeded after modifying the command and hola………
it did boot as gui……and then it showed a message
“Kernel panic – Attempting to kill init”
the system hung for about 30 mins at this state and i had to shut it down.
similarly,
i did it with “root*” and the same thing happened there also……
I also did the “single user login” but showed the command line and showed logon screen requesting a password.
So, I will tell you what I have–
I know my root password.
I don’t know how to log on as a normal user.
I don’t know what I have to do to log on as root user in f10.
what’s the problem?
Have you tried the steps that Kae wrote in the first comment? They do not even require a root password.
even tried that and resulted in normal login screen…….
I’m not sure what else you could try. I would try asking on the Fedora Forum or the Fedora Mailing List.
I’m sure that there are some people on the mailing list that know a hell of a lot more about Fedora than I do :L