# How To Recover ROOT password - easy? | Linux Renaissance **URL:** \ **Category:** Linux Renaissance Blog\ **Created:** [April 29, 2026, 6:13pm UTC](https://forum.linuxrenaissance.com/t/how-to-recover-root-password-easy-linux-renaissance/18 "2026-04-29T18:13:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![darth](https://forum.linuxrenaissance.com/user_avatar/forum.linuxrenaissance.com/darth/32/46_2.png) [@darth](https://forum.linuxrenaissance.com/u/darth)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2026, 6:13pm UTC](https://forum.linuxrenaissance.com/t/how-to-recover-root-password-easy-linux-renaissance/18/1 "2026-04-29T18:13:11Z")
29 Apr 2026 · [#password](https://linuxrenaissance.com/tags/password/) · 2 min read # How To Recover ROOT password - easy? You Don't Know your Linux Password. Now What? It happens more often than anyone admits. You inherit a server from a colleague who left the company. You spin up an old VM you haven’t touched in two years. You buy a second-hand machine with Linux already on it. Or you simply forgot — because you set it up at midnight and never wrote it down. Whatever the reason, you’re staring at a login prompt and you don’t know the password. The instinct for many people is to reinstall. Don’t. There’s a much simpler way, and it takes about two minutes. The same trick applies in another situation that catches a lot of newcomers off guard: on many Linux distributions, the root account isn’t unlocked by default. Ubuntu, for example, doesn’t give root a password at all — you’re expected to use `sudo`. But if you ever need to get into single-user mode, recover from a broken sudo configuration, or simply reset your own user password without being able to log in, you need another way in. That way in is GRUB. By making a small, temporary edit to your boot entry — changing one word and adding one line — you can boot directly into a Bash shell with full root privileges, set a new password, and reboot as if nothing happened. No reinstall. No data loss. No drama. The full walkthrough is on the forum: [Recover your Linux password — GRUB method](https://forum.linuxrenaissance.com/t/recover-your-linux-password-grub-method/30) * * * This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at [https://linuxrenaissance.com/post/recover-root-password/](https://linuxrenaissance.com/post/recover-root-password/)