What is my login username and password?

Question

Just loaded Ubuntu Server 12.04.2 and all went well. I rebooted the system and up came Ubuntu login:

I tried everything I could think of and pressed Enter. 'Password' appears, but it won't let me type anything. What is my login? I remember being asked to set a password, but not a login name.

Solution

Rebooted the system and up came Ubuntu Login:

During installation you should have been prompted to create the first user. That's the username you should be entering.

'Password' appears, but it won't let me type anything?

That's because Ubuntu won't show the password on the screen (even as you type it).

If you can't remember your username or password, then you need to boot into recovery mode as described here: How can I re-instate my admin privileges?.

From there, you should be able to add a user account (and set its password) for normal use:

adduser myUserName

Give it a password and provide any other info asked.

Adding user `myUserName' ...
Adding new group `myUserName' (1001) ...
Adding new user `myUserName' (1001) with group `myUserName' ...
Creating home directory `/home/myUserName' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
Enter new UNIX password: 
Retype new UNIX password: 
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for myUserName
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
    Full Name []: tester
    Room Number []: 
    Work Phone []: 
    Home Phone []: 
    Other []: 
Is the information correct? [Y/n] Y

Then, add this user to the admin and sudo groups (assuming that you want your user to have the ability to "sudo").

adduser myUserName admin
addgroup myUserName sudo

Or as Rinzwind suggested, check the /home directory for any existing users. If you find one but you're unsure of that user's password, reset it:

passwd myUserName

Then reboot and login as your new user.

Comments

[mick]

Thanks for the responses. Managed to get in and been adding all the tools I think I will need? Can load them but cannot conf them? keeps saying 'Permission Denied' Also, my Client says the server is there on the network, but cannot seem to get in?

[Aaron]

What are you trying to configure? And just to be clear: You should restore access to a normal user, reboot, and log back in as your normal user. You should not do anything else as root, other than restore a user account for yourself.

[mick]

Just been following the advice on wiki. Not configured anything as I have been doing it from my user account. confused as I know the directories are there, but cannot see them from my PC