Lost root password
 

Dear Sir,
One of my friend has changed :eek: the root password of my system and I am unable :( to login as root :scratch: I am using Suse 9 which uses GRUB Loader. I have edited :study: the Kernel by adding 'single' at the end. Yet :cry: it is asking root password after loading. :confused:
I am new :newbie: to Linux. Could any one help me from this. :rolleyes:

Google is your friend. So is the search engine here. A google on "lost root password" returned 1,240,00 results. One of those should be helpful. :D

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org!

When you boot up your computer, do you see any options to select?

If so, you need to select "failsafe" which will put you automatically into a root console, where you can change the password with the "passwd" command.

Google is already my friend. I would like to correct ur reply.
It gave 1,350,000 results for Lost Root Password and
gave 4,640 results for "Lost Root Password".

Thanks for reply to my msg.:D

Yes, i am seeing options to select. :) I selected "Failsafe". ;) . But it is ending at the login prompt. :o . I am able to login into my user login.;) But i couldn't enter into root. :o . I couldn't give root password, since i lost :cry: my password. I don't know what to do?:scratch: Kindly suggest any more ways :jawa: to this new bie.:newbie:
Thanks for ur kind considerable :cool: reply.

well, if you can boot from a cdrom, you could boot knoppix or maybe the first suse cd to get an root linux promt, then chroot to your linux harddisk partition and execute passwd

if that fails, try editing your /etc/shadow to set the root passwd to a known string (create this using md5)

Hi

Enter single user mode by typing 'linux single' at the boot prompt.

then use the 'passwd root' command to change the password.

Robert

failsafe should not bring you to a login, but an immediate terminal prompt, so that doesn't seem to make sense to me...

You could boot with knoppix, mount the drive, chroot to it, and then change the password that way... but i've never done it, just know that it would work.

:scratch:

Put you SuSE CD in and boot from it as if you were doing an install. then chose to updat your system rather than doing a new install, add a program to your installation then accept, the YaST installer will add the selected program then will go through some basic setup questions and at the end it will ask you to input a new root password. when your done you should be boot up SuSE and everything should be the same except the one added program and a new working root password.

ADDITIONAL: because of this feature when your done you should go into your computers BIOS and turn off the ability to boot from your optical drive/s

Failsafe means different things in different systems, even different linux systems.

If you cannot solve this from the SuSE install CD (you should be able to), then use a live CD like knoppix to edit the shadow file. Look for the root line, and alter it like so:
This is a colon separated list. The random garbage that you see is actually your pasword hash. Get rid of it and it should let you log in with a blank password.

(This is not my real root entry by the way...:))

knoppix is your friend...

Really? I didn't know that... maybe it's because i've been used to mandrake for so long :p

Where can i get knoppix. :rolleyes: I think i can download knoppix.:p If I download, how can i boot from it.:eek: If I have to write it into CD, i don't have CD Writer.:cry: Help me my friend. :Pengy:

www.knoppix.org is their site

yes you have to burn it to a cd, though you could order one off of the internet, too