Use sudo but forgotten my password

Question

I am trying to use sudo on a linux server but have forgotten my password. is there any way to retrieve it?

Is this the same password I use to login to ssh?

the sudo password is the password you use to log. – Archemar Oct 13 '20 at 05:46 — Archemar, Oct 13 '20 at 05:46
Related, if not a dupe: What is my sudo password? – Kusalananda Oct 13 '20 at 05:50 — Kusalananda, Oct 13 '20 at 05:50
Does this answer your question? What is my sudo password? – nohillside Oct 13 '20 at 07:42 — nohillside, Oct 13 '20 at 07:42

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 17 '20 at 12:22

sudo is a utility to execute a command as another user. So if you have superuser-privileges, then you (your current user) can run a command as e.g. the root-user. Therefore you only need to use the password you also use for login.

But it might be that you do not have superuser-privileges. This is defined in the root-only readable file /etc/sudoers. There you find a line similar to

%sudo   ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

(although another group name could be used instead of sudo, e.g. wheel, depending on your distribution). Any user part of this group is able to run the sudo-command.

If you cannot run sudo, you are probably not part of this group (or you just became part of the group and need to logout and then login again).

Use sudo but forgotten my password

1 Answers1