Password confusion

Hi all,

I have been learning by example reading posts and advice and got stuck right at the beginning with setting passwords. I skip a detailed account of the hair-raising adventure with a Superuser Password previously set in the BIOS (F2) and presently unrecognzied at start up. Set containing both upper and lower case, the system rejected it. I finally managed to get an all-upper case variation recognized after quite some time passed trying out variations (with an elevated heart rate).
Then I proceeded to set up extra accounts. 'su' - Password: (my Superuser Password). su: INCORRECT PASSWORD. Upper-lower case variations? No. Aha, the examples use the User Password. No better luck with these. Aha, 'sudo useradd soandso'. Yes that works! I was expecting a prompt for my user password. That didn't come up, fortunately, because if 'su' doesn't accepted it why would 'sudo'? Still, not knowing one's User Password isn't a workable condition. What the hell is my user password anyway? Let's see: Settings - Password - Change Password - Current Password: (my current User Password). New Password: (pick). Confirm ... DAS EINGEGEBENE KENNWORT IST FALSCH! (German for "Good try! Keep trying.") After failing with the upper-lower case routines I had to change strategy. I went back to the BIOS and took the User Password out, came back here expecting the password-setting template to let me choose a new password without requiring the existence of an old one. Current Password: (no entry), New Password: (pick), Confirm ... "CURRENT PASSWORD" SHOULD NOT BE NULL (!!!).
So, here I am at the end of my wits. I neither know what my user password is nor do I see a way to set one, since knowing the password seems to be a prerequite and not having one an illegal condition!
'cat /etc/passwd' on the last two lines respectively shows a 'user' (presumably me) and the new user 'soandso' that I managed to create ('sudo useradd soandso'). Soandso wasn't given a password. The entry shows two exclamation marks. The 'user' on the other hand has a password. I see its 34-character encryption. I verifyied that this encryption doesn't change if I change the User Password in the BIOS setup. This fact would indicate that the passwords one set in the BIOS settings are entirely unrelated to the passwords one uses working the file system.
Can anyone with a clearer vision untangle this confusion? Please!

Gratefully yours

Frederic

 

for changing your superuser password

sudo bash
passwd

for your bios its in QWERTY (maj) 8 letters max if you don't remember it flash your bios...

 

Hello Kapinouwi,

Thanks a million. I take the terseness of your message as a compliment to my expertise but must confess that you overestimate me. So if you would please explain what you mean by 'sudo bash passwd'. It is unclear to me which of these words I have to enter and which ones, if any, are what the machine says. With anything but passwords I would just go and find out myself. But with a superuser password at stake I hestitate to touch anything unless I am absolutely sure what I'm doing. You may also tell me what 'flashing' a BIOS means.
Anyway, the BIOS Passwords aren't a problem anymore. The remaining problem are the passwords for operating the file system. A User Password I cannot set usign the Settings Template, because it requires an existing password which I have been unable to guess trying all possible variations of all passwords I may ever have set or tried to set anywhere on this machine. As a solution I could think of deleting the user 'user' and creating a new account. ('sudo userdrop user', 'sudo useradd user' where 'userdrop' stands for the real command which is surely different.) It might be that simple. But then it might not.
Last, having a real superuser password giving access to superuser privleges, I think, is a better solution than fooling the system with 'sudo'. Question: Is there such a thing? (login root - supervisor password).

Regards

Frederic

 

sorry but my english is very limited.... damned frenchy!

if you dont know your password to be "root"

open terminal with alt f2

write "terminal" (w/o quote) clic on run

in the new window

sudo bash (enter)
passwd (enter) and you can enter a new password you don't see them but it's normal with linux

if you don't want to use this solution use the "search" button this problem is a classic here...

 

This confuses me too. I think there are 4 passwords on the AA1.

user: what you entered at the initial power up but never used since the AA1 is set as a single user machine.
root: also what you entered at the initial power up. Use this after "su" in a terminal window.
BIOS1: one you may enter in BIOS and is required, if entered, during the boot sequence.
BIOS2: one you may enter in BIOS and is required, if entered, to get back into BIOS setup.

"user" is listed somewhere on the "sudo" okay list so no password is needed for "sudo".

For me, BIOS1 and BIOS2 are blank, I remember the root (and user) password but keep all my online names and passwords in an encrypted database with keepassx. The AA1 can always be stolen or lost.

 

Kapinouwi, Jinx,

Thanks for your input. With Kapinouwi's recipe I managed to set my root password. 'su' (password) works and now I am 'root'. Or some kind of pseudo-root more likely: 'user' with relaxed read restrictions or something like that. 'pwd' still shows '/home/user'. I cannot fathom all implications at this point. The account 'soandso' which I managed to create the other day as 'user' with 'sudo' is still there. I can set and clear its password with 'passwd', but as I don't have a login screen the account is inaccessible. I'll delete it when I find out how. At this point I'd like to add a few remarks of a more general nature:

As a personal data management product aimed at the technically disinterested consumer market, the AA1 may not be the best option for someone wishing to move up from Windows to a transparent, virus-proof(!) and fully controllable operating system. The manufacturer would remove all access, execute and write permissions as necessary to protect the functional integrity of his 'child's-play' configuration for which he assumes a warranty. In his place I would do the same. But as a user I should be given the choice to opt out of restrictions meant to protect me from making mistakes. If Acer offered a standard Linux 'Hacker's Edition' with appropriate documentation and warranty, I'd prefer that one. As to my knowledge they don't I hope to find expert advice on this forum on how to hack the restrictions away.
Standard Linux for all I know has a login screen. Here anyone with an account can log in. There is one account created at installation time. It's called 'root'. Its password, obviously, must also be defined at installation time. This is the adminsitrator's account. He has privileges over the entire system. He sets up and removes user accounts. I assume that the AA1 basically works like this but is set up with a hidden, rather hacker proof startup routine that skips the login screen and jumps right to the utilities menu, and systematically assigns all terminals to 'user' ('root' being another name for 'user'). So we have, as Jinx says, in effect a one-user OS. It is intolerably unpleasant for someone moving up from Windows to Linux to end up in an OS environment that is in some way substandard in Windows terms.
The reasons why I believe that we do have a straitjacketed standard Linux are: 1. Standard Linuxes are free for the asking. 2. Turning any one of them into a one-user system takes some doing and down-configuring takes a lot less doing than down-rewriting. 3. The hardware has so much capacity that skimping bytes would be a waste of time.
Having said this, I believe I should change the topic from 'Password confusion' to something more apt to attract the expert hackers' attention.

Thank you all

Frederic

 

No: if you use su (on its own - see below) you are running in the terminal as root. You have full authority to do anything to he system, including wiping it completely!

pwd just tells you your present working directory. If you use su while in a directory, you stay in that directory.

If you were to disable auto login, you would be able to login in as this user; alternatively you can become that user in a terminal by doing

Code:

su soandso

You should then be prompted for the soandso user password. 'su' actually means 'substitute user'; if you don't tell it what user you want to change to, it assumes root. (Note the 'should' there - Acer seem to have done something funny to the way su behaves, so it may not do!)

..which I've snipped to save space, but which are mostly accurate. One point: there are two users on the AAO, root and user. If the whole thing was running as a root-only single user system, you wouldn't need su for anything.

I've done quite a bit with my One, but I'm used to Linux and working round the very weird Acer implementation is just another bit of fun. I'd certainly agree that a "full" Linux version would be good; various people are working on options (see the threads on Ubunutu, Mandriva and Kuki). This is Linux; if the manufacturers won't do it then the community will.

 

Code:

su program-to-run <CR>

runs the program as root but with the user's environment

Code:

su - <CR>
program-to-run <CR>

runs the program as root but with roots environment. Note: <CR> means carriage return; i.e., hit the Enter key.

The difference can be significant (it certainly is in Fedora, upon which Linpus is based).

And, while on the topic of users - Linpus is a two-user system, an ordinary user named "user" and the all-powerful (root) user, named "root".

 

Thank you all ! Great comments and advice . . .

I guess that takes care of the topic. There's just one aspect one of you experts might want to comment on. How virus-proof is the system? If I can go anywhere with 'su', then a virus can. No? It would set up an account, give it a password, log in and call 'su' using that password.

Frederic

 

It's got to be root to set up the account in the first place, so that gets a bit circular!

That said, the security policy on the One is not as strong as a Linux system should be. That makes it easier to administer (Acer have dumbed stuff down to match the interface!), but in the end it's not a good thing.

 

Had the same problem with my password and just want to say BIG thankyou to kapinouwi. MWAH!!!!!