Ok, Sorry about this dumb question. Have Red Hat 7.3 with a dule boot using Windows 98. Trying to boot using the Emergency boot disk created when the distro was installed. Trying to make a new root password. Wrote it down wrong or something. Can get in as a client but not as root. Followed instructions from another thread by putting in the Emergency disk. Machine won't boot with disk in "a" Drive. Removed disk. GRUB gives me the option of starting windows or Reh hat. Tried putting in disk and then selecting Red Hat to run. It runs but ignores the disk in the a drive.

Also tried loggin in as client and attempting to change root password per instructions in my O'Riley book. No go. I know that I am doing something stupid. Just can't figure it out. Anyone out there can suggest a particular HOW TO to guide me? Or any other advice will do.

Even if there is another way to change root password would like to know how to boot using disk created for that purpose.

Thanks,

SJ

Try putting in your redhat disc, and starting up as if you were going to install. Then, once at the first screen, you should be able to press enter or something else, maybe F1. Press F1 for help might be the wording. So press F1, then if you read through the options, you should have a "rescue" option. So type rescue, then enter. This will take you into rescue mode. Mount the drive, in say, /mnt and then you will need to access the /etc/passwd file. In there you will see a user called root. Delete the X in roots entry. Now go ahead and restart, root will have no password, so you will need to make a new one.

Cool

To mount a disk use
fdisk /dev/hda
to run fdisk, if you don't know how is your Linux partition called (/dev/hdax where x is a number)
press 'p' to list your partitions, look which one is EXT3, if you have more then one, look at sizes, note down the partition name
press 'q' to quit fdisk

Then, to create a directory to mount your disk to:
mkdir /mnt/linux

And to mount:
mount -t ext3 /dev/hdax /mnt/linux
(replace x with the right value in your system).

Now you should have your Linux main partition mounted to /mnt/linux, so you need to edit /mnt/linux/etc/ files.

Thanks for the info. In the deep south for the next few days. Can't wait to get back to try the advice. Will let you know how it went.

SJ