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I am running Oracle VMware and installed Ubuntu 17.10 Artful. When I start Ubuntu it asks for a user name and password. I did not set up a user name or password. How do I open Ubuntu without a password? I am beginner and do not have a clue. Thanks for any help at all.

WinEunuuchs2Unix
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JHennesay
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1 Answers1

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Well, you kind of need a user to run the whole graphical interface, but you can set Ubuntu to skip the login screen.

But first you need to reset the password of your user, you can do it like this: (taken from Ubuntu Recovery Mode)

Switch on your computer. Wait until the BIOS has finished loading, or has almost finished. (During this time you will probably see a logo of your computer manufacturer.) Quickly press and hold the Shift key, which will bring up the GNU GRUB menu. (If you see the Ubuntu logo, you've missed the point where you can enter the GRUB menu.)

Select the line which starts with "Advanced options".

Select the line ending with "(recovery mode)", probably the second line, something like:

Ubuntu GNU/Linux, with Linux 3.8.0-26-generic (recovery mode)

Press Return and your machine will begin the boot process.

After a few moments, your workstation should display a menu with a number of options. One of the options (you may need to scroll down to the bottom of the list) will be "Drop to root shell prompt". Press Return with this option highlighted.

The root partition is mounted read-only. To mount it read/write, enter the command

mount -o remount,rw /

Since you seem to have forgotten what your username was, have a look at the passwd file :

cat /etc/passwd

Near the bottom of the output you should find a line that tells you your username next to "1000:1000"(which is the ID of the first user)

<username>:x:1000:1000:<username>,,,:/home/<username>:/bin/bash

now you can set a password for this user 

passwd <username>

Now you can reboot your VM

reboot

Log in with your username and password (that you just set)

Now you can enable "automatic login" - click the small downwards arrow in the right upper corner

Click your username

Click the symbol of a padlock that is displayed in the menu bar near "Unlock" and enter your password

Now you can toggle on "Automatic Login" and close the window and you are done - on the next reboot you should not need to login any more

Robert Riedl
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