Lost admin password

[Jeremy Schwartz]

Hi team -

Is there a universal reset, or anyway to restore access to an administrator account, once an admin has lost a password?

Thanks

[Robert McQueen]

Hi Jeremy,

You can boot Endless from a live USB and then use the eos-reset-password script to clear a user's password on the HDD - it should ask for a new password next time that user logs in.

Cheers,
Rob

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Robert McQueen  |  +1.415.413.4159  |   Endless

[Jeremy Schwartz]

Thanks, Robert - I don't have an Endless machine near me at the moment. Does this mean the only way to get the admin password reset is with a live-usb?

If so, where are scripts stored? Is this something I can guide a non-tech savvy person through?

Thanks, Robert -

[Robert McQueen]

Hi Jeremy,

In principal you could do something without live media by interrupting the boot by holding shift, overriding init= and then manually mounting filesystems/changing passwords, but this is far from something that a non tech-savvy person could do. Simply booting in single-user mode won't work because we don't set a root password by default, so systemd locks you out and you have to proceed with a normal graphical boot.

It should be possible to guide someone through creating a USB stick (using the Endless USB creator for Windows for instance) and then booting it, opening a terminal and running "sudo eos-reset-password" but I appreciate the steps of creating and then booting from USB is still a bit of a pain.

The script is installed in /usr/bin on Endless systems by default, so it should be on the path by default, or you can get it from our git repo at: https://github.com/endlessm/eos-meta/blob/master/eos-tech-support/eos-reset-password (looking at this, we could probably be more robust at figuring out which is the internal disk with the OS installed on it...)

Going back to your original message, what did you mean by universal reset? Erase the system back to a pristine state? You could just run the reflasher USB again to achieve this.

Thanks,
Rob