Administrator Password Problem

Hi all,

Complete Linux noob here and trying to work out where I have went wrong, I bought my one from my mate who had literally switched it on and decided he didn't want it (won it as a prize at work.) He says that he did enter a password when he first got it and today we changed it in the change password setting in options to my new password but when I attempt to install software it asks me for a password and says that the one I changed it too today is not correct?

Am I doing something wrong?

Message shown as follows: -

You are attempting to run "pirut" which requires administrative privileges, but more information is needed in order to do so.

Authenticating as "Root"

When I enter my password, I dont get an error message, the same dialog box appears again.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

First: passwords are case sensitive. IS there any chance you had caps-lock down when you first entered the password, or have it down now?


If not, try this:
Do alt-F2, type 'terminal' into the box and click OK. This will give you a Linux terminal.

Now in this terminal type

Code:

 sudo passwd user

and you should be prompted for a new password.

Yes, that's right: you can change the user password without knowing he existing one. This is a massive hole in security on the One - it's not the usual Linux way at all. It has been discussed elsewhere on these forums!

 

Thanks for your reply Daldred.

When i changed the password earlier it was a completely numerical entry and I am positive there were no locks involved.

To reset it just now I done exactly what you said and my password reset was successful in terminal, same situation when it comes to going to add/remove programs however, dialog box just keeps re-appearing when I hit OK.

 

Cracked it, you sent me in the right direction its just the root password I needed to change and not the user one.

Thanks.

 

You're welcome!

The One seems to set both passwords to be the same when you first set it up, so usually there's only one to remember!