Hi all,

how does one change the username in the initial (graphical) login screen?
In my case it is stuck on one standard user, in the sense that the username is"fixed", as opposed to a fillable blank field.
I am pretty sure that there is another user, but I'm unable to log into it.

Please bear with me, I know this is probably a very dumb question.

The problem is that I installed antix on my sister's old laptop more than 1 year ago, and neither of us used it since.
Now she needs to use it, and she is not very computer-savvy. I'm only slightly better, but I'm some 400 kms away from her.


As I say, the problem is that the login screen is locked on one standard user, but we do not recall the corresponding password.

We do remember the passwords for root and for a different standard user.
However, we are not able to change the login name.
It is as if the session was locked. As I say, nobody used that laptop in more than 1 year, so I doubt it is actually locked. Also, the situation does not change after rebooting.

We tried"demo" and"root" in the password field, but the system always says"wrong password" or something like that.


I'm pretty sure there must be some key combination to switch users, but I was not able to find it.
Everything I find concerns switching users in a shell, which I don't need.

Thanks a lot for your patience
Francesco

You can start up in 'single user' mode, should be an option on the boot screen, that will drop you to a shell as the 'root' user, & change passwords/users there.
Type 'users' to see what users are configured.

Thanks a lot for your reply.
I can surely do that when I get accesss to the laptop!
The point is that the laptop is currently with my sister, and I doubt very much she would be willing to go through shell commands.

I need something easy, like a key combination to bring up a login window where one can choose the username, and not just type in the password for a fixed user.

I'm not very sure about what's happening. As I say there should be at least one other standard user, and I expect to be able to choose which one I want to log in.
In other linux distributions the login screen has a blank field for typing the username in, or user"icons" that one can click...

Thanks again for your patience

It sounds like you have the following set in you /etc/slim.conf:AFAIK, this means that you will not have the option to change to a different user. It is sort of like being in kiosk-mode. Therefore someone will need to get to the command line in order to change this.

An easy way to get to the command line from the SLiM login screen is to use Ctrl-Alt-F2. You will then be given a prompt for a user name and a password. If you remember the root password then log in as root and run:which will open up the slim configuration file in a simple text editor suitable for beginners. There should be no space between the first slash and"etc". Scroll down to the focus_password line, change"yes" to"no" and then save the file and exit from nano. Instructions for this on on-screen. Then run the command: The only alternative to the simple procedure above is to search the web for"slim login manager" and see if there is some kind of backdoor or hotkey way out of the focus_password kiosk-mode but I don't think there is.

Hi BitJam,

thanks a lot for this.
I'll try and search the web for any shortcuts, as you suggest.
Knowing what to search for is already a great step forward for me.
I hope I'll find something, otherwise my sister and my dad will have to wait a couple of weeks.

If I find nothing, I'll follow your instructions about the focus_password option as soon as I get to the laptop.

Do you know whether that"focus_password" setting is a default? Because I really do not remember choosing it, and I see no reason why I should have.

pfb wrote:Do you know whether that"focus_password" setting is a default? Because I really do not remember choosing it, and I see no reason why I should have.

I don't know. I usually only work with the live system and I seldom install. Someone who has more experience on installed systems should know the answer. The live system does not enable focus_password, in fact it logs into the demo account automatically.

focus_password is set to no, so it must have been altered manually.

Yes, I would expect that.
I really have no recollection of setting it to"yes".
But then again, I used that laptop more than one year ago last time.
Maybe the option got changed while I was trying something else.
But, if anything, I would have tried to enable auto-login, because my sister complains a lot about passwords.

I still have not found anything easy to log in the other default user.

I guess I'll find out what happened in a couple of weeks.

Thanks again to you all