Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1281016
In Process
hiro protagonist
Asked: 2020-10-08 23:42:58 +0800 CST

ubuntu live-server as rescue system - how do i log in?

  • 772

i want to try out a few things on the ubuntu live-server (currently ubuntu-20.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso from https://releases.ubuntu.com/).

it would be much easier for me to be able to log into that live system over ssh. i could also imagine using that as a rescue system in the future (yes, there may be better options for that).

i was looking around on the system a bit (# cat /etc/shadow) and found that the only (pre-installed) user that has a password set is installer.

what is this user's password? (if that is public it should be somewhere in the docs but i could not find it so far...)

server password users 20.04

1 Answers

  1. on the installer screen you can go to Help -> Help on SSH access and the password will be displayed.

    the cloud-init service on the live-server sets a random password for the installer user at boot. it can be found in /var/log/syslog:

    ubuntu-server cloud-init [...] Set the following 'random' passwords
ubuntu-server cloud-init [...] installer:S0m3R4ndomPassw0rd

    as cloud-init is running you can always provide a users: section in your datasource and configure a user.

    in earlier versions is seems to have been possible to pass ubuntu-user:password as a kernel option (i can't find the reference to that now...). i tried that with installe-user:password - with the effect that the installer failed to setup the installer user

    originally found on the discussion here: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/interactive-live-server-installation-on-ibm-z-vm-s390x/16604

    • 1