Sudden password problems

[Adventurer]

Hello,


My two pandoras have been sitting idle for several months, with batteries taken out. Today I suddenly noticed, that I can no longer perform any administrative tasks - it asks for password I have never set, and I can not do anything from the things I need, such as format memory card or connect to the wifi.


The message I keep getting is "enter your password to perform administrative tasks"


I opened terminal, on command "sudo su", I get the following:


1) Respect the privacy of others


2) Think before you type


3) With great power comes great possibility


Password:


It seems that the root password has also been set, so I can not override anything with terminal. The only idea is to reflash Pandora with a new image, but I hope there is something else that can be done?


The strangest thing is that I did not have any passwords set before Pandora was stored, and I have no idea, what has happened. To make matters worse, I switched on second Pandora, and it behaves just the same.

 

[ekianjo]

a quick fix would be to just reflash them.

Have you tried synchronizing the clock by the way ? sometimes wierd issues come from a wrong time.

 

[Adventurer]

a quick fix would be to just reflash them.


Have you tried synchronizing the clock by the way ? sometimes wierd issues come from a wrong time.

Thanks for quick answer, unfortunately clock syncing did not solvd the problem, probably will need to reflash...


Is there any logical explanation, how this can happen? Does Pandora storing without battery can possibly corrupt password data?

 

[ZXDunny]

It's happened to me a few times - I can get in with my user login/pass but some admin elevations fail. In a terminal:

sudo <task>

Works fine but

su <enter>

Fails to authenticate. It worked a week ago, but I'm not too bothered until sudo starts to fail too. When it does, I'll reflash - it's the only way to fix it for me.

D.

 

[notaz]

My two pandoras have been sitting idle for several months, with batteries taken out. Today I suddenly noticed, that I can no longer perform any administrative tasks - it asks for password I have never set, and I can not do anything from the things I need, such as format memory card or connect to the wifi.

How did you manage not to set any password? IIRC first boot wizard can't be completed without setting some password.

 

[Adventurer]

My two pandoras have been sitting idle for several months, with batteries taken out. Today I suddenly noticed, that I can no longer perform any administrative tasks - it asks for password I have never set, and I can not do anything from the things I need, such as format memory card or connect to the wifi.

How did you manage not to set any password? IIRC first boot wizard can't be completed without setting some password.

Probably I did set password at the beginning, but the main problem is that I can not reset anything from Terminal, and I have not set any passwords there...

 

[levi]

The terminal uses your user password whenever you try to sudo something - that's the same password you set in the first run wizard. If you've forgotten that, I can't think of anything else to do than reinstall everything.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Messed up /etc/sudoers permissions ?

 

[dimag0g]

When pandora wizard runs on the first boot, it will as you for username and password, and you will use those to login if you opt out of automatic login at start-up. The wizard will also set a random root password which you're not supposed to ever know.

When you need to perform an administrative task, there are two options:

1. The "task" in question is listed in sudoers file: bingo, you can run it without password. Usually, wifi setup works like that, and if need a password to connect to wifi then something is messed up. Also, running any PND requires an elevation to run "mount" command.

2. The "task" isn't listed: you should run it via sudo command, which will ask for your password, the one you have set in the wizard. This is what happens when you run "sudo su".

Concerning your case:

1. It's perfectly normal that sudo su asks for your password.

2. It's strange that your password is required to use wifi.

3. As far as my knowledge goes, there is no way to recover your password if you forget it.