Re: lost my root password, howto ?

Zouari Fourat wrote:
Hello,
I've got debian sarge installed and i've lost my root's password, how
to reset it ?
This is probably found via google fairly easily, as it comes up fairly often.

A couple of quick possibilities:

1) Boot off a live CD like Knoppix, mount the / partition as read/write, and edit "/etc/passwd", removing the "x" in the second field. Save the file, boot into single-user mode (not using Knoppix), and reset the password with "passwd". (You may need to then check to make sure the "x" is back in place; I can't recall.)

or if you don't have a live CD handy

2) at the lilo prompt (or equivalent), enter "linux init=/bin/bash". This will give you a very limited linux environment, in which you can remount the / partition read/write (like "mount -o remount,rw /dev/hda1 /"), and then make the changes mentioned above in scenario #1.

--
Kent


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