[ Thanks to jhansonxi for this link.
]
“Ubuntu recovery mode is a basic boot configuration for
repairing a broken system. In this mode it skips most configuration
files and daemons in order to achieve a functioning root prompt.
For the security-conscious administrator this itself is a problem.“There have been complaints about unchallenged root access in
recovery mode. Ubuntu uses sudo for root access and the root
account is disabled via a “*” password. If you forget the passwords
of the admins (any user account in the admin group) then this makes
it possible to easily reset it.“Originally, recovery mode went straight to a root prompt which
wasn’t useful to non-technical types. With the addition of Friendly
Recovery, a menu is displayed with a list of repair options. The
menu is just a Whiptail selection dialog driven by the
“/usr/share/recovery-mode/recovery-menu” script which queries other
scripts in the “./options” subdirectory.”