Reset Ubuntu server password remotely

Question

my friend is hosting a Minecraft Server for me. I wanted to update some plugins, I SSH into the server. But then I relieved I forgot the root password. I asked my friend, and he forgot too! I was wondering how I could reset it remotely.

Answer 1

Of course you can fortunately not log in remotely to a server without knowing the account password (or having SSH-keys set up).

Just imagine what happened if there was a way to bypass authentication on any arbitrary server connected to the internet and log in as root (or admin account with sudo permissions, doesn't matter). Looking at the issue this way makes it clear that such a thing may not be possible.

You can only reset a forgotten root password if you have physical access, which gives you the option to boot the system in recovery mode and drop to a root shell, as described in How do I reset a lost administrative password?