Re: bootloader password

ch1cke3n_ju1c3r@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

With that in mind, it seems odd that you'd take issue with someone
posting from a Non-Linux box.

Actually it was because some others may have looked. Though at this time of year, I did look since it sounded like a lab or test question. Of course it could just be someone who doesn't know to include any pertinent information.

It's been broken down into discrete, googleable steps, that should be
sufficient. If you care to break it down further, be my guest.


Well, actually the original question was googleable. It would even yield in the first few links how to do it on both lilo and grub.

Without knowing for sure, the distro involved, telling him to use a rescue disk, first disk of the install set, or a live CD/DVD, would be difficult. I know you would think that it would be a Fedora or Red Hat derivative distro since this is a Red Hat newsgroup, but that may not always be true. Of course, a live CD/DVD will work, but which one? He may be running a file system that is unusual.

If it is not a Fedora or Red Hat derivative distro, the location of the configuration file may not be in the /etc folder. Though grub.conf isn't really in the /etc folder anyway. (I don't remember if lilo.conf is really there or not. It's been a long time since I used lilo.)

The answer by the way is read/update/remove/comment out, in the case of lilo, or remove/comment out, in the case of grub, the password line in the configuration file. The obvious answer is to replace the configuration of the boot loader. Though just replacing the configuration could remove directives to the kernel required for the machine to properly run, or even boot at all. Telling them to replace the configuration might leave them in a worse position than they already were in.

Ken
.

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