Recover / Reset Pi login?

I know there’s tons of password reset issues, but I couldn’t find any posts that seemed to provide what I’m looking for.

I’m unable to ssh or login directly when connecting my pi to a monitor. I’ve tried the default pi/raspberry login, I’ve tried my ncp login (shows “This account is currently not available”) and I’ve tried whatever other pi/passwords that I might have set up, but I haven’t connected in this way in a long time so I have no memory of setting different credentials.

I can connect to my instance on a local computer and sign in with my ncp login and see my files, but I’m having an issue where my 10TB HDD is only giving me 3.9TB so I was trying to connect so I could run the commands that seemed to resolve the problem in this post (Unable to use entirety of hard drive for storage - #6 by xyx) but without being able to get command line access, I’m out of luck.

I’d imagine my login solution would involve some sort of intervention with the sd card? I’ve plugged it into my windows machine, but didn’t see any files that looked like they would help. Pages about recovering pi logins refer to an “/etc/passwd” directory, or some “/etc/shadow” directory, but the only folder I see is like “overlays” and there’s no files referring to passwords or anything.

Is there anything I can do?

If not, if I wipe the sd card and start a nextcloud install from scratch, will I be able to access my files once I plug back in my HDD that currently houses all my data?

Thanks!

How to reset root password in Debian from the grub boot menu. This will allow you to recover access to your Pi account

This is a common issue stemming from partitioning your drive without extending it to use the full 10tb. You can resolve it using a partitioning tool such as gparted or similar. Be sure to make backups before doing this.

I don’t think I set it up with Debian, I set it up with the NextCloudPi OS, I think I’m on version 1.28.1 based on the output when I try to log in. I just get a terminal prompt for my login when I boot up the pi, and if I enter in my ncp credentials, I get a large low res NCP image.

NextCloudPi is using Debian as OS.

I recommend to follow just’s proposal (see above).

Also an option - but more complex compared to password reset as you’ll have to reconfigure datadir = all the files (not a big deal) and database (users, authorizations, etc. = more complex)

I see. I’m not getting any UI like what was in that link, and other sites on recovering debian access also don’t match what I’m getting.

I just get a big command line output for a minute or so, then a prompt for a login saying:

Rasbian GNU/Linux 10 nextcloudpi tty1

nextcloudpi login:

No amount of keyboard mashing gets me any other options. I tried this, but it didn’t make any difference, typing su just took it as the username and still seemed to expect a password: https://coderwall.com/p/t8oqfq/reset-lost-root-password-on-raspbian-raspberry-pi