[conspire] Where is my Pwd?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting jose tav (j_tav at yahoo.com):

> Hi Folks,
> My little netbook Atom N180 at times is acting on me.
> I don´t remeber setting any password for it, of course I could be wrong.
> The need arise when I put it in sleep and I woke it up ask for the Pwd
> but not a cool boot. Any way, where (directory) I should go and what
> to look for and how to reset the pwd.

Hi, Jose.  It's a little unclear from your posting what's asking you for
a password.  For example, you could be talking about a piece of software
(a utility provided by the operating system) asking you for a password,
or you could be talking about the BIOS-based hardware code asking you
for a password.

If the latter, you'll need to go into the system BIOS and look for the
subscreen for setting a password.  Pay attention to the descriptions
carefully.

I suspect it's software, however.  I'm betting you _did_ supply a
password during installation, but you also set the machine to autologin
at startup time.

You cannot find out what your user password is currently set to, on
Linux systems.  However, try this, to set it to a new value:

Open a shell prompt.  Type "passwd" and a carriage return.  This is the
password-setting program.

Unfortunately, it is likely that "passwd" will prompt you to provide
your current password, before it will be willing to let you set a new
value.  If it does that, then you'll need to "break in" to the system
with root authority at startup time.

Here is a page that details how to do so in Ubuntu:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/resetpassword

Frankly, it'll be about the same on any other distribution, too.