On 6/30/25 20:58, Maureen L Thomas wrote:
Ok guys, I finally had to reinstall Debian bookworm and lost all my
passwords. I did get a refund on the VPN but have spent the last
three days changing all my passwords to get into the bills and pay
them. I went for PIA VPN and followed instructions to get me into the
root area.
Sorry, I have no experience with VPN.
When I went to the terminal I first followed the directions which
stated sudo. I put in my new password and with no way to check it I
hit enter. Three times I did this and was very careful to put it in
correctly. It would not take it and kept saying not accepted.
I've had that problem once or twice where a newly created password would
not work. I've always suspected typos or undefined caps-lock state.
Most password entry forms have a small icon to click then you can view
the new password you entered. I always check that when installing Debian
and anywhere else I need to create a password, just to confirm I didn't
inadvertently have caps-lock or number-lock active.
The terminal doesn't have that option, in that case if I want to be
doubly sure I'm getting my new password correct, I open a text editor
and type my new password then copy-and-paste it into the terminal
window. Then when it asks for it the second time to confirm, I type
directly into the terminal.
The time I accidentally locked myself out of sudo, I mounted the locked
hdd on another linux pc and edited the shadow file, copying the hash for
sudo with the known password to the drive with the unknown password. I
would not recommend trying that unless you are confident about editing
operating system configuration files.
So today I tried it again with just su and got the same results.
I am at a complete loss. If I can't get into the sudo file I cannot
install anything in root. I really need your knowledge. I always
double and sometimes triple check everything I do. Passwords are
written down and double checked especially the new ones I made.
Thank you in advance.
Moe
--
Titus Newswanger
Curtiss WI
