Hi all,

Whats up? I just aquared (sp?) an older computer with RH 7.3 installed. I can not login, because I do not know the root password. What can I do?

p.s.
to dave_ross,

Thank You for puting that warning at the end of your signature, but, I wanted to see what does (old computer with 2.5 Gig hd), funny as hell, but, when/why would someone use that comand?

You'll need to boot into single user mode or straight to a shell to change the password. This has been convered many times before, a quick search will most likely find detailed directions if you need them. Regards.

Thanks

Hello!
I'd boot from the rescue disk, mount your partition, and edit your /etc/passwd file... Delete the password entry for the root user so it looks like this:
root:[password used to be here]:[more junk here...]
Then, reboot, and login as root...you shouldn't be prompted for the password. Then, run the passwd command to set a new root password, otherwise, your computer will be without a root password...very, very, bad...

You could of course just do a clean reinstall...
--Taj

Thank You

You only do it if you want to remove all files on your compurer that you have write access too. The meaning being, if everything goes bottoms up you can just reinstall and start where you left off (always make sur eyou have backups though) That is tgreat thing about computers!

Follow these steps to reset your root password:
1) Reboot your computer.
2) When the grub bootloader appears on the screen select the entry for your linux system - it may be the only one.
3) Press the "e" key to edit the entry.
4) Select the line beggining with "kernel".
5) Press the "e" key again
6) Type " single" no quotes
7) Press enter
8) Press "b" to boot
9) When the prompt appears type "passwd" press enter
10) Enter a new password when prompted
11) Reboot by typing "shutdown -r now"

thanks, it worked, but, could someone use that to gain root access and mess someone else's computer up (i.e.) rm -rf /

Only if they have physical access to your computer. That is why it is safer to include a bios password and bootloader password too. Even this will not prevent someone physically removing the drive and mounting it in another system.

Hi this is NIKITA and I am having similar problems. I tried the steps from posting #6... and it when I was GRUB pressed "e" but it gives me no choices. I the only iption I think I get is "i" them enter a password which I don't know. What do you say?

You will need to enter your grub password. IF that doesn;t work then boot with your rescue CD (CD1) then delete the root password from /mnt/sysimage/etc/shadow

Then just reboot.