Changing User / Root Passwords on Qubes OS

User Support
1

I like to change my passwords a lot for both user & root. So in Dom0 what would be the commands to do this??
For root would it be…passwd (then I change password)

For user would it be… passwd user (then I change password)
Just asking as I have not done it yet and not really familiar with Dom0 yet

Thank you all

2

I believe there is no way to do it through a user interface. So I think that’s the way to change it.

3

Great I’ll give it a go!!
Thanks

4

I was unable to login after installing Qubes OS for the first time today.

  • I knew the correct LUKS password, so I could unlock the LUKS device
  • I did not set a password for root during installation
  • I set a user password during installation that I kept in a password manager, but just could not log in (the password was just not working, and I tried it assuming not just my preferred keyboard layout but also US, just in case). nothing helped.

So I had a user I could not log in as, and did not want to have to reinstall Qubes.

Most answers I found related to resetting passwords were terse advice in the style of run simply run passwd in dom0. Which confused me. I thought, great, how to get to dom0?. This is the first time I ever used Qubes.

I found an old comment on how to change the root password in Fedora in the Qubes Subreddit, and tried that in order to change the password of the user I could not log in as (the passwd <username> form). It helped, I was then able to log in. So far so good.

But should I then need to reboot, go back to single user mode, unlock the LUKS device, run restorecon -v /etc/shadow, and run setenforce 1, like the article says? It would be nice to have some clarity there. This feels like open heart surgery, where the heart is left on the operating table if the procedure is not done correctly or completely. I don’t understand the SELinux part of the procedure, and whether it is truly required for Qubes OS.