Steam Deck @sopuli.xyz Silly Goober @thelemmy.club 2d ago

(solved) HOW DO I CHANGE THE SUDO PASSWORD FOR MY STEAM DECK WITHOUT KNOWING THE OLD PASSWORD??????

hi so i wanna change the sudo password for my steam deck but its forcing me to put the old password AND I DIDNT PUT ANY PASSWORD BEFORE so I NEED HELP

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If you haven’t set a password before, then it should be the default one: empty. Then, to use sudo you will need to set one by using passwd command.

In case if the password was set in the past: the only way would be to run factory reset, or restore from image.
- Booting from any rescue Linux system and removing or editing /etc/shadow in the overlay partition would work as well. No need for a factory reset.
- i tried running passwd deck then trying sudo passwd deck and it worked :D tysm
You have to manually edit /etc/shaddow
- Without sudo? :D
  
  You have to boot from another OS, mount the drive, then do it. If its LUKS protected you gotta open that first.
Have you installed anything else on your deck already in desktop mode, like Decky loader, emudeck, cryoutilities/etc?

Some of those have an option to set a default password to something like "deck". If you clicked through the setup on those it might have set a password without you realizing.

edit: Decky loader can temporarily set the password to "Decky!". It's supposed to remove the temp password after installation, but that's worth trying if you installed Decky. Right now I don't see a default password for emudeck or cryoutilities, but it's possible other deck install scripts might set one.
- i do have deckyloader, i also know it sets the password temporarily to "Decky!" i tried that and it didnt work D:, i didnt try the password "deck" yet i will try that in a sec (it didnt work either)

8 comments