bypass username/password
 

My friend recenlty purchased a computer with SuSE Linux from someone for $50 but he dosnt know the user name and password. Is there any way to bypass this without a disk?

what disk?

* boot into single-user mode (add "single" to the kernel arguments in the bootloader) and run "passwd" to change root password

* or boot a LiveCD or something and erase the hash for root in the shadow file

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

The short answer is no (EDIT: I'm assuming Suse doesn't allow single-user mode without a password). A system isn't very good if you can easily bypass it's security measures. You should be able to boot the system with a live CD and modify /etc/shadow to remove the root password.

"Security measures" are never meant to protect against physical access.

I was referring to his request to bypass entering a username/password. And security measures are meant to protect against physical access - but different ones are needed, like the lock on my server room door... :)

Perhaps he should just ask the person he bought the machine from?

I am never comfortable with questions like this because I've had machines stolen.

Without knowing what version of SUSE, you r best bet might be to simply install a modern version of Linux.

Does it have a CD Drive? If not, go buy one and install it.

You can boot from any "live CD" Linux distro--often available on magazine covers.

Find the file /etc/passwd and edit the "root" entry to remove the "x". The root entry will wind up like this:
root::0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

When you re-boot, you will be able to log in as root with no password

1. Download DSL (Damn Small Linux) or knoppix
2. boot using DSL
3. Mount the root file system to a directory
4. chroot /mount/point
5. passwd root
6. sync
7. logout
8. reboot