[Tfug] Ubuntu password

[John Karns]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 2:43 PM, John Gruenenfelder
<johng at as.arizona.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 02:24:43PM -0700, Matthew T. Eskes wrote:
>>   Just boot into single user and delete /etc/passwd
>
> I've not tried it, but isn't this a monumentally bad idea?
>
> /etc/passwd doesn't store a user's password, but rather the details of the
> account itself.  It also defines all system users on the machine as well.
> Passwords are stored in /etc/shadow, but I don't think you should delete that
> either.  If you delete /etc/passwd there won't be any record of your user
> account (uid, name, shell) thus making the entries in /etc/shadow and
> /etc/group meaningless.

In the past (admittedly, it's been a while), I've just deleted the
contents of the password field in /etc/passwd using an editor after
booting into single user mode.

-- 
John