Hi

everyone
Today I found that my mail server root account has been hacked and has been disabled
Our server runs on a live IP and seems somebody has played with /etc/paswords file and I am not able to login
and get a message saying saying " YOur system admin has disable the account"

anybody know s how to recover the root password and apart from root aI have not create any other users too unfortunately

I have read that It can be recovered thru rescue-backup option
But from here onwards I am totaly lost because I got too many suggestions from google which did not work

Any one Knows how to recover the password under such cases?

hi,
search for root password you will get many threads

hi ,
anyway quick answer to your question is start linux in runlevel 1 or single user mode and reset the password from there. as you have not mentioned which linux distro and which boot loader, its not easy to answer specific way

hi

I am using RH 9.0 Linux distribution...
boot Loader is grub boot loader ....

Now please give me step by step procedure that I must foolw assuing I am starting from scrath i.e from instance I boot my linux machine

where should I specify runlevel 1 or single user mode as I directly get meesage saying your admin has disable this account
what do I do

Other Advice I got is go to rescue backup that will mount back amy original system but how should I re-enable my root password

I would be obliged if you could expalin in step by step as I woud noit want any data to get lost or system crashing as it is live
So I need to be extreamly cautious

Experts please give me good advice...

reboot d computer

Ctrl+alt+del

then when the boot loader screen comes [The screen where you can select your OS]

press 'A'
then 1 space bar
then type 1
then enter

now the system will boot in run level 1

now issue the command passwd

to change the root password.

after changing it type

init 3 ----to go to run level 3

Thanks For your reply

http://linuxgazette.net/107/tomar.html

and by the way you don't want to "recover" the root password (which is very hard), just to set a new one