How to Reset Forgotten Root Password in Ubuntu

In this article, you will learn how to reset the forgotten root password on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Firstly, you need to either power on or reboot your Ubuntu system. You should get a grub menu as shown below. If you are running your system on VirtualBox, press the ‘SHIFT’ key on the keyboard to bring up the boot menu.

Ubuntu Grub Menu
Ubuntu Grub Menu

Next, press the 'e' key to edit the grub parameters. This should display a screen as shown below.

Grub Boot Parameters
Grub Boot Parameters

Scroll down until you get to the line that begins with 'linux /boot/vmlinuz' the entire line is highlighted below.

Find Grub Boot Parameter
Find Grub Boot Parameter

Narrow down to a section that reads "ro quiet splash $vt_handoff".

Locate Grub Boot Parameter
Locate Grub Boot Parameter

Replace "ro quiet splash $vt_handoff" with rw init=/bin/bash as shown. The aim is to set the root file system with read and write commands denoted by the rw prefix.

Enable Root Filesystem
Enable Root Filesystem

Thereafter, press ctrl + x or F10 to reboot your system. Your system will boot into a root shell screen as shown below. You can confirm that the root filesystem had read and write access rights by running the command.

# mount | grep -w /

The output in the screenshot below confirms read and write access rights denoted by rw.

Confirm Root Filesytem Permissions
Confirm Root Filesytem Permissions

To reset the root password execute the command.

# passwd 

Provide a new password and confirm it. Thereafter, you will get a ‘password updated successfully’ notification.

Reset Root Password in Ubuntu
Reset Root Password in Ubuntu

With the root password successfully changed, reboot into your Ubuntu system by running the command.

# exec /sbin/init

Thank you for coming this far. We hope that you can now comfortably reset the forgotten root password on your Ubuntu system from the grub menu.

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James Kiarie
This is James, a certified Linux administrator and a tech enthusiast who loves keeping in touch with emerging trends in the tech world. When I'm not running commands on the terminal, I'm taking listening to some cool music. taking a casual stroll or watching a nice movie.

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24 thoughts on “How to Reset Forgotten Root Password in Ubuntu”

  1. After the reboot step, the Acer laptop continues to slowly scroll : { 3765. etc nonstop with the first numbers increasing in value? Let it run all night and still the laptop is scrolling. Redid it all after shutting down and restarting, Followed the directions again, and once more it is doing the same thing.

    Any ideas? I thought it would finally come to an end – but it sure doesn’t look like it. How long should this part of the process continue? Days?

    Reply
  2. Thanks much for this article,

    I made the mistake of changing the username when installing the virtual machine, so that name was not included in sudoers and I didn’t have the root password. Reboot, reset root PW, visudo, and add the correct user (I use NOPASSWD:ALL since it’s a VM on a laptop just for utility) reboot again, and “all better now.” :-)

    Reply

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