It’s not unusual for users to forget their root passwords. It’s a common occurrence especially if you haven’t logged in as the root user for a long period of time. It can happen to the best of us. But don’t worry. In this guide, we will walk you through how you can reset a forgotten root password in Linux Mint.

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To get started, power on or reboot your Linux Mint system. After a few seconds, you should get a grub menu on the screen as shown below.

Linux Mint Grub Menu

On the first highlighted option, press 'e' on the keyboard to edit the grub parameters. You should get the screen shown below.

Linux Mint Grub Parameters

Next, scroll down using the arrow down cursor key until you get to the line beginning with 'linux'. Navigate until you get to the ro quiet splash section and add rw init=/bin/bash.

Change Linux Mint Grub Parameter

Then press ctrl + x or hit F10 to boot into a single-user mode as shown below.

Linux Mint Single-User Mode

To reset the forgotten root password in Linux Mint, simply run the passwd root command as shown.

# passwd root

Specify the new root password and confirm it. If the password matches, you should get a ‘password updated successfully‘ notification.

Reset Root Password in Linux Mint

And finally, press Ctrl + Alt + Del to exit and reboot Linux Mint. You can now log in as the root user using the newly created password. And that’s how you can reset a forgotten root password om Linux Mint.