Recovering username for my linux installation?

Question

I accidentally removed the greeter from my Elementary OS installation , and now I get asked for the username that I donot remember as its not my regular OS. WSL does my day to day tasks regarding linux.

I tried using recovery mode to check etc/passwd but unfortunately recovery mode gets stuck at Loading initial ramdisk ... during boot.

I tried a suggested method, via live CD to get around this new issue, but ctrl+alt+f1 lead me to the same login screen.

I mounted my linux filesystem on the terminal itself and binded dev,proc and sys to /mnt/dev /mnt/proc and /mnt/sys then ran apt update && apt upgrade via chroot.

I lost grub boot menu, which is not an issue since my windows on my ssd and linux on hdd , and I get the option to boot from either via the boot drive menu (F8) allowing my to seamlessly boot into windows on regular usage without any additional menu asap.

But now I cannot get the grub menu to load recovery, even by pressing shift thrice on the boot time. What can I Do?

Answer 1

If you really only need to know your username, you can mount the drive on another Linux device, and navigate to /home/ to see the users. Each user will have a dedicated (personal) home directory inside of the /home/ directory, called by the user's name.

This will not work if your disk is encrypted (unless you can first decrypt it).

If you have additional problems (other than not knowing the username), please post and explain them appropriately.