root password

[sixthsense]

If i have forgotten my Linux root password, is there anyway to get it back or overwite it. I know there is one way throught "linux single". But what if i have disabled the "linux single" option?. Kapil Aggarwal

Technical Director
Infovalley Interweb Pvt. Ltd.
Microsoft Certified System Engineer
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[bgarlock]

Try this link:

http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue50/tag/4.html

Bruce Garlock
bruceg@tiac.net

http://bruceg.dyndns.org

 

[ifincham]

Hi,

You can't 'disable' single user mode but it is possible to password protect it through /etc/lilo.conf. If that's the case, you just need to boot the system from a CD or bootable floppy and then mount the original root partition somewhere and look inside the /etc/lilo.conf to get the relevant password. If you have a recent bootable linux install CD then most of them will accept 'rescue' as an argument to the boot prompt :

boot: linux rescue

As long as you can get a working linux system and you know your target root partition you can just do something like this :

# mkdir /mnt/temp
# mount /dev/hda1 -t auto -o ro /mnt/temp
# cat /mnt/temp/etc/lilo.conf

(where /dev/hda1 would be the normal linux root partition)

If you can't boot from a CD or boot floppy then try tom's root/boot disk from -->

http://www.toms.net/rb/

Once you have the lilo password you can then boot to single user mode nad change the root password.

Hope this helps