This one is a bit basic, but I think a new blog post is called for. At least three times now, I’ve seen queries on the Raspberry Pi forums from people who think they are unable to type their login password.
The reason for this is that in Linux, when you type in your login password, nothing comes up on the screen. All you have to do is type it and press <ENTER>. The keys you press are still being read by the computer, but nothing is being displayed (echoed) on the screen. In Windows and many other operating systems, you get XXXXX or ***** coming up (usually one for each character you type). But in Linux, this doesn’t happen. Don’t worry, as long as you type your password correctly you will log in. Type it carefully, press <ENTER> and you should be logged in. If you get it wrong, it will tell you. And even then you will get to try again until you get it right.
It’ll work – you’ll see. :yes:
At least one other person on the pi forum has my problem. Using latest Raspbian image. I can’t login using pi and my chosen password. It doesn’t come back with password incorrect (which it does if I type rubbish in) it just goes away (black screen) has a think and comes back with a new login prompt. So it’s stuck in a loop. I can however login over the wifi to Putty (using same u/n & p/w) on my laptop and I can start VNC and get the standard pi screen. So I can probably fix it if I knew what to do!
The more I think about this, the more it sounds like a bug to me.
Found a reference to using ‘root’ as u/n, no p/w. This works but it would be nice to get back to normal ?:-)
I wonder if it’s your password itself? Have you tried logging in via ssh and changing the password? Just for experiment’s sake I would choose a simple one with just letters. You can change it with
sudo passwd pithen it should prompt you for new password twice. See if that works? I just wonder if for some reason, the RasPi doesn’t work well with your chosen password? If that works, you can try more complex/secure ones.Having seen your forum post, I’m now thinking it’s likely something to do with your VNC setup.
Thanks for the password info. It also helps if you (as in my case) remeber there is a “p” in raspberry.
That one has caught a surprisingly large number of people out ;)
yes and then after video what is next ? i am stuck just there
startx … for goodness how long to get that word !!! thanks nice clip
I have the same problem of not being able to login as pi locally, or as a new user, only as root. It seemed to happen after installing a VNC server (tightvncserver). If I login via VNC or ssh (also ssh -Y) there is no problem.
I haven’t tried uninstalling tightvncserver.
If it is a bug can I work around it?
Does it ever happen that a Raspbian image is corrupt and default login doesn’t work ? I’ve got 2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img and pi::raspberry doesn’t work.
On my first trial I got caught because default keyboard layout is qwerty and mine is azerty but I checked I type properly using the login line to see if “raspberry” is typed properly and it’s OK but I still get a login incorrect every time I try. I’ve tried dozens and dozens of times to no avail. I’m not exactly a noob, I’m a sysadmin and I manage hundreds of servers so login in is something I do daily, all the time, so I don’t think it’s a case of PEBKAC but in that case I’m confused, I don’t see what could be wrong…
Any lights on the subject welcome.
Cheers
I re-downloaded the archive, expanded it and dd’ed it to the sdcard anew and hey presto, problem is no more… I noticed with the previous install that upon boot a whole series of errors concerning system accounts were displayed but I thought it was simply because they were disabled by default in Raspbian. Obviously that was not the case. Either the image I had was corrupt or dd failed to properly copy image to sdcard. Both possibilities are odd. Anyway, if you don’t get the initial raspi-config screen before initial login and default pi::raspberry login doesn’t work, then start from scratch again is my best recommendation.
I had the same problem but the cause was a cheapo Tesco keyboard where the 1 q a and z keys stopped working and so when I typed raspberry it was entered as rspberry and not displayed so it was incorrect. Just by luck in frustration I typed something rude with an a in it and noticed
thx very helpful
Like docdoob, I experienced the same login symptom immediately after installing tightvncserver. I cannot log in locally, but can log in via ssh. Via ssh, I did a sudo apt-remove tightvncserver and rebooted, but still can’t log in locally. I’ve seen this same symptom on LUBUNTU that was installed in a very small hard drive partition. Once memory was low, the log-in symptom was the same as here. Freed up hard-drive space and the problem went away. Given this system has only 8 GB of drive space and 1 GB of ram, it’s likely loading tightvncserver may have pushed it over the memory edge? I’m inclined to start remove games and other miscellaneous apps. Anyone find a recovery method?
Have you expanded the partition to fill the available space on the SD card?
I have not expanded the partition. But, low memory was not the issue. I did clean out a bunch of unused programs and freed up more than half of the available SD card. The problem was definitely caused by installing tightvncserver. Uninstalling tightvncserver doesn’t fix the login issue, btw. The symptom is the screen going black for a few seconds after log in and then back to the login screen. Using SSH from a remote machine, I logged into the the default user pi account. Then, I added a new user with sudo rights using adduser and visudo commands. At the local PI 2 machine, I was able to log into a graphical session using the new user name and password. However, the original PI user name login still didn’t work. Screen goes blank for a few seconds and then back to the log in screen. I’m confident the purist fix is to go in and manually modify an X configuration file for the PI user somewhere. There seems to be a conflict between tightvncserver :0 X session and the default :0 X session. I’m not sure where or what to change without more research. However, I did work around the login problem by adding a new user.
I had a similar issue with an unexpanded partition. Expanding it cleared the problem
I forget my raspberry pi username?what can i do?
hey there !
I am unable to login to my Raspberry pi…………I am connecting Pi to my Lappy for first time……….
In the PuTTy window I put Pi as username
But I forgot the Password :(
Is there anyway in which I can reset it to default password ?
You could try http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2014/08/how-to-reset-a-forgotten-raspberry-pi-password/
All the documentation failed for me… so here is what I did when the remount fail it:
If the remount fail and complain about PARTUUID, maybe your fstab is wrong, so use this:
mount -o remount,rw /dev/mmcblk0p2 /
It worked for me.