I have lost my root pass word and don't know how to recovery . Please help me. Thank you very much.

There is no way to recover it. But you can boot from live cd, edit your /mnt/yourlinuxpartition/etc/passwd and delete it completely, then restore it with loging in as root (no password) and running 'passwd'. Or if you have sudo installed and configured properly, you can run 'sudo passwd' and enter new root password.

This is one way to do it

1. Download the Gentoo Minimal CD (any Live CD should work)
2. Boot the CD
3. Mount your partitions. like
    mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/comp    mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/comp/boot

4. Chroot to the mounted partitions and update the environment
    chroot /mnt/comp /bin/bash
    env-update
    source /etc/profile

As far as your machine is concernced, you are now running linux on your hard drive rather than the Live CD, so just change the password

    passwd root

5. Unmount and reboot
    exit
    umount /mnt/comp/boot
    umount /mnt/comp/
    reboot

or, bootloader permitting (lilo-style):

boot: linux init=/bin/sh
(let it boot)
# passwd

Careful of using the lilo option if that is your bootloader. I had a laptop with SuSE 8 and it prevents you from entering in "Single User" mode.

Just a heads up.

P.S. I know that at the very least Grub packaged with Fadora Core 2 still offers "Single User" mode.

I imagine it's a matter of editing lilo.conf to change that...

--Jonas

in grub
go to the kernel that you want to boot, e (edit) then put 'single' (no quotes) behind it, then enter, the b to boot it. once it's boots then passwd and you're set.

for the lilo, the above will apply. if the distro that you're running won't let you into the edit mode of lilo, then boot with a small live disk, like feather or dsl linux. you can then either mv the old /etc/passwd into place, which i suspect you have, (make a cp of the original one first) and then reboot.

once you learn the tricks, make sure that your buddies don't let you near their boxes on boot.

Hey,

Lil noob question, but it seems way too easy to reset the root password. Is this not a bit of a security flaw? If I set up a shared computer with Linux, I don't want someone with a little know-how to change the password on me, and then do as he/she pleases.

Am I wrong?

Thanks,
Matt

with both lilo and grub you can specify a passwd to enter before you edit it. you can also specify a passwd so that it won't boot until you enter it.

Or just boot to single-user mode!
At the boot prompt, type If it's a graphical prompt, <Esc> should get you to a boot prompt.
Then you're logged in as root, just type to change you password.

Man, why does everyone else take the easy way out.

Actually, I've learned a few new and such easiers way than I used to do. Thanks everyone

There's always an easier way with Linux!