Just found someone else who also completely forgot his username and password. I feel a little bit better that I’m not the only one. Now I just need to dig up a blank CD somewhere, to create a live CD with which to inspect my auth logs, whatever that means.
I don’t know anything about Linux, but I had a feeling that I wanted to install a distribution on my old computer, to replace Windows 98. So when the sys admin at my old office suggested Ubuntu, I went with Ubuntu, simple as that. He even burned me an install CD for Ubuntu version 5.10. After a bit of work, I managed to install it on my machine and got it up and running.
Then I stopped. I got the OS up and running, and then got distracted for about 9 months. Now I’m returning to the project, and I realize that there’s a much newer version of Ubuntu available (6.06), and I’ve completely forgotten my username and password. The OS still loads as usual, but I haven’t a clue how to actually get into the thing. I’ve tried all the usual suspects for usernames and passwords, and none of them have worked. I’m wondering if maybe there’s a default user account and password that I never changed, or maybe the solution is to just wipe this OS and start over with the newest version of Ubuntu. One thing’s for sure though, progress would be a hell of a lot swifter if I just wrote down some essential information every once in a while. Sigh.
I went off to school in 2000 with a super sweet Dell Dimension 4100 desktop, running Windows 98, First Edition. I graduated four years later with the same desktop, same operating system. But somehow, with the passage of time, the machine became less sweet to me. As cliché at it may sound, I decided to ditch the PC for a Mac iBook G4, and my old, trusty desktop was left to rot in my Mom’s basement…until now.
I’ve picked up a wireless network card and a mammoth hard drive, and it’s time to whip this piece-o-shit computer into shape. That being said, I know nothing about computer hardware. I do know that I don’t have internet access as the computer stands now, since Windows 98 First Edition doesn’t support wireless network cards. So it seem the first thing to do would be to wipe the machine and install a new OS.