Andrew Mello : 88plug

Lost your administrator password?  Working with a client who has lost their administrator password and need to install applications and updates? Here is a very simple workaround to resetting the password on any account in OS X.

So what do we do?

Basically start up your Mac in single user mode, deleting the local profile cache for the creation of a new user.  Upon restart, you will be prompted to setup a new administrator account.   This process of creating this account is the same as after a fresh install.  Once you have logged in under the new account, open System Preferences>Accounts and change the password of your original account.  No data is lost, and nothing is deleted.  Logout/Login with your new password and then delete the temporary admin account.

Presto – Password recovered.

1.  Reboot in Single User Mode – hold Apple Key(command)-S after you hear the chime

2.  Run the following:

**Note**
In terms of security, this is why restriction of physical access to a machine is critical.  Passwords are not safe, and are not to be conceived as “safe”.  Strong passwords are irrelevant if you do not limit physical access to machines.  Play safe.

Take a look at this post over at Ubuntu forums for a very comprehensive, yet easy to understand guide to Grub2.  Noteworthy mentions are as follows:

“At first boot, there will not be much difference in what the user sees on the boot menu. The one exception is a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10 with no other installed operating system. In this case, GRUB 2 will boot directly to the login prompt or Desktop without displaying a menu. Other major differences:

• No ”/boot/grub/menu.lst”. It has been replaced by ”/boot/grub/grub.cfg”.
• Hold down SHIFT to display the hidden menu during boot (formerly ESC is GRUB legacy).
• There is no “find /boot/grub/stage1″ at the grub prompt. Stage 1.5 has also been eliminated.
• The main menu file, ”/boot/grub/grub.cfg” is not meant to be edited, even by ‘root’.
• ”grub.cfg” is overwritten anytime there is a update, a kernel is added/removed or the user runs `update-grub` *
• The user can use a custom file, ”/etc/grub.d/40_custom”, in which the user can place his own entries. This file will ”not” be overwritten.
• The primary configuration file for changing menu display settings is ”/etc/default/grub”.
• There are multiple files for configuring the the menu – ”/etc/default/grub” mentioned above, and all the files in ”/etc/grub.d/” folder.
• Other operating systems, such as Windows, should automatically be recognized and added to the menu.
• No changes made in the configuration files will take effect until the `update-grub` command is also run.”

Big thanks to our author : http://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=223945

Original Post : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1195275

After any install of Karmic, 9.10 the new GRUB 2 bootloader will not start the generic kernel. On first reboot after a fresh install, when you select the standard boot image you are left with a black screen, and possibly a blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner.  To boot anything functional I was forced to start in rescue mode, resume normal boot, login as my user, then run startx to start GNOME. What a disaster! Simple fix? You got it!

It’s time to edit Grub2, a daunty little beast that is not to be mistaken for Grub.

1. Open the grub config

2. A note : grub.cfg cannot be modified without changing the file permissions first. Do not modify /boot/grub/grub.cfg Simply put, every time you run update-grub this file is re-generated. Changes here can be dangerous.

3. Find the following, or similar depending on your kernel

4. Remove “quiet splash”

5. Run

6. Reboot