I dont think your friend understand what he thought he was saying.
If you are getting signal and can get a "update" then you ARE doing
something. Temperature has had troubles. I still cant get it to work. I
changed to another program.

xdisk?
root password?

Sure you arent on windows?

I assume you're on Ubuntu, not something else. What your "friend" tells you is
not possible you must be root to do an update ... I dont know of any update that
could mess with the root password. And if you installed an regular Ubuntu image
you don't need the root password .... Only your own password and use "sudo" to
execute a command as root. I dont know of any "xdisk" for anything else than
modding an XBOX...

Are you sure you can trust this "friend" ? Or was he talking about wireless
security. You must check with the internet cafe what is the WPA key if any.
Ask for any other wireless parameters that you need to know to connect. Do you
have enabled DHCP or Is there fixed IP addresses given to you ? Do you have
yourself any filter/firewall to prevent others to get into your machine via your
wireless network card. I would rather check the wireless network configuration
before messing with any "root password" someone would ask me to modify.

Best to check as BT advised and stick to that password.

I do not think update at all would change the root pass word. That has to be
done by the root user to change the password. It most like to be could be simple
as this link
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessNetworking

just installed ubuntu and trying to get to the net and am unable to.
seems only to have a loop back ip addres 127.0.0.1/255.0.0.0 do i need
to do something to aquire an ip address ? i am going through a network
hub but i works with my windows pc. Can anyone assist. I am totally new
to ubuntu.

I have cableone as my provider.
I have a cable modem.
My modem has DHCP turned on so any computer (wired or wireless) on my
network will receive a IP address.

Going off that little example, you have a modem that dumbs to a hub so I
assume you have more than one pc. So dhcp must be enabled.

What type of modem do you have.

Oh, Ill need to know what make and model of modem you have.

I tried to look up specifications on both those devices and they both
appear to be fairly old. Not that that really means much.

Ok. Log in to your modem. Does it have a DHCP server? If you have more
than one computer on your system Im betting it does. On newer ambit
modems you would look for Operation Configuration and see how many CPE's
are allowed and what the DHCP server is.

Some things you might try are, plug your ubuntu computer directly into
the modem and see if it gets a connection there. If not, I would suspect
your network card not being seen by the system, the network card not
working, or possibly the cable itself.

If you do get a IP, plug it next into the hub. I would suggest
unplugging everything else at this point. If it can get a ip there then
you have some questions to get answered. It might be that you are only
allowed so many computer to receive a IP address. If this is so then
you'll have to contact the cable company about dropping one of the mac
addresses that they have for your system.

I pluged the ununtu machine directly in to the cable mobem and still
only have the 127. ip address, i put the download of ubuntu on
another machchine and had the same effect. i can hook several windows
machines with no issues. it seems that the software may not be seeing
the connection ? i see from one post that forcing and ip address may
be needed however i am totally new to ubuntu so i simply do not know
how to do this. Any ideas where to go from here. ?

Click on the network icon.
Select manual configuration and input your password.
On the "Connections" tab you should see Wired Connection and under that
it will say Address: dhcp.

Click on the Properties button in the Connections tab. Do you have under
configuration "Automatic configuration (DHCP)"

Click on the DNS tab.
Do you have any DNS servers listed?


If all that checks out try:
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

I also have:
sudo dhclient

when i enter the command sudo/etc/init.d/networking restart i get the
following
bash: sudo/etc/init.d/networking: No suck file or directory ?
also on the connections tab enable this connection is
checked. ,configuration is set to dhcp. ip address is blank , subnet
mask is blank , gateway address is blank.
On the DNS tab DNS servers is empty as is search Domains. ?

I have power cycled the modem and put the dhcp address in. I get the
no server found error. The ip address is the loop back of 127.0.0.1
when I look in the network tab there is not ip 4 addres only an ip 6
address. Under system synaptic package manger there is no avahi-
autopid . when I do a search for IP4v there are only the following
listed lftp , tcpdump.?

I don't know if this is your problem but when I first
tried to get Ubuntu on the net I had to force an IP address,
the address of my router, into the DNS tab of Network Settings.
Without the DNS assigned I could see other computers on the network
but I couldn't get online. It needed that domain name server to sort
out the "english" addresses to "dot" addresses.