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Sometimes some people forget their root password on their Linux machine. And not recommended to install back the Linux since so many configuration have done during that period time. Now, we can retrieve the password as long as we have physical access to the Linux machine. There are 2 ways to solve this problem.

1st way
Reboot your Linux machine
Get into “grub” menu then press “e”
Go to your default kernel then press “e” again
Then go to grub prompt grub> default_kernel single <– type “single” at the end of your kernel. We are entering single mode.
Then it will appear as sh-3.00#
Then type “passwd” or edit /etc/passwd

2nd way
Reboot your Linux machine
Boot from 1st CD of your distro
Get into the “Rescue Mode”
Follow the instruction
We get into prompt again sh-3.00#
Type “sh-3.00# chroot /mnt/sysimage”
Then type passwd or anything you want

Congratulations you have your root password back. Don’t forget about your root password again in the future

Ubuntu is one of the few Linux distributions out there that will not enable the root account. If you want to do something with root permission on the console you have to type sudo before the command.

sudo” means superuser do. “sudo” will prompt for “Password:”. Please specify user password

As you have noticed during the Ubuntu installation there was no question about the root password, as you might have been used to see during other Linux distribution installation process. Because of this your root account is inactive.
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