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I just did an UPGRADE using Synaptic in my HPZ820 machine. Before executing the UPGRADE, Synaptic gave a message that some upgrades were not authenticated and asked if I would like to continue the upgrade. I did and the upgrade proceeded smoothly. Upon restarting the PC, I cannot login to the Root account anymore. If I do, Ubuntu loops back to the login page.

Could someone advise me how to undo the upgrade and return to the previous state?

Thanks.

Edgar
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3 Answers3

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First of all, policy concerning the root account in Ubuntu is that you shouldn't use it directly, but rather sudo or sudo su - from another account.

I'd suggest you do that to reenable your root account.

Failing that, booting with a livecd or booting into rescue mode and restoring your root account seems to be your best course of action.

fuero
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I'm not sure what edition of Ubuntu you had before, but as far as I can remember Ubuntu has always had the root account disabled by default. You should never, never, ever run as root for everyday activities. That's just asking for trouble.

Instead, use your normal user account and simply type in your password when required for root activities.

Nathan C
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You run sudo -i from your normal user account, then with command passwd you can set up password for root user. If you can't do this, you may follow this instruction:

  • reboot
  • in grub, press e to edit boot parameters and add init=/bin/sh to line starting with linux. Press F10 to boot
  • you will boot within single shell, no services will be started
  • run mount / -o remount,rw to remount your root partition in read-write mode
  • run passwd, change root account password
  • run sync to flush all filesystem changes to disk
  • reboot with reset button. Command reboot will not work, because it was not started
Selivanov Pavel
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