Unable to reset root password / init: "x" respawning very fast
 

we are at Enterprise linux server rel.4 and recently encountered invalid password when logged in as user root.we are unable to reset root password using USER MANAGER screen.Hence we tried to change password using single user boot but encountered command not found.following error occurs when trying to boot the system

init: "x" respawning very fast: idle for 5 minutes

Appreciate your help in advance.

you can just delete / replace the password from /etc/shadow (if your in single user mode):

If this does not work you can boot into rescue mode (with a cd/dvd) and then chroot into /mnt/sysimage.

good luck

Hi
Thanks for your suggestion.
Unable to remove the Root Password from the /etc/shadow file.
Encountered the following error message
chmod:changing permissions of 'shadow':Operation not permitted.

Kindly advise any other alternative method to reset root password.

Thanks,
Ram

you don't have to chmod the shadow file. just delete the password from /etc/shadow if you are in single user mode (add 'S' to the grub options) and then save with ":wq!" in vi. the '!' at the end writes the file even if it is not writable for the current user.

If you are saying that you can't get into single user mode, you will need to boot from the Install CD into rescue mode.

Boot the RHEL4 installation CD and type linux rescue at the boot: prompt.

Hi madmadmod,
Thanks for your reply with suggested solutions. we noticed that the attribute sia was set to /etc/shadow file and thereby we are not able to change the password. After changing the attribute, able to reset the password successfully.
We also noticed that there were many other files in our system, whose attributes set to sia. We compared those files attributes in another server and there were no attribute set to sia for similar files. Is it recommended to remove the files already set to sia? Is there any impact in removing the file attribute already set with sia?
Thanks,
Ram