I installed linux red hat to my box.. well i partition my hd to 2 n install windows too. i got a problem with display and sound and kinda lose hope wit using linux

well i have not been using linux for quite sometime and wht do u know... I FORGOT MY LOGIN N PASSWORD...

please help me.. is there a way to retrieve my login or is there any alternative.. could i reinstall my linux or format it out of my system..

your help would be most helpful to me...

some linux systems can be booted into single user mode without asking for a password. then u could change the passwords if u'd like.

when u see the lilo prompt, type:
linux 1
(assuming that linux is the label that boots ur linux partition, if not use the label u set up and add " 1" to it)

i don't know if red hat asks for a passwd when u boot into single user mode, but if it doesn't ur now able to change the passwords. if it does ask for the root passwd, then i guess this was a useless post

is "linux 1" the same as "linux single"?

yes

the best way to solved this problem is by using a rescue disc.

you need to boot either from a floppy, a cd or even another linux bootable partition on cd. then you mount you own linux partition in /mnt for an example (e.g. mount /dev/hda1 /mnt) then you can edit your password file(s) as /mnt/etc/passwd (and /mnt/etc/shadow if you have a shadow password file) there you will find one line per user with different fields separated by columns (":"). on each line second field is the password (please check this because I don't have the doc near me, right now) it can have 4 different kind of values : "" if there is no password (shouldn't be the case), "*" if there is no valid password (when this user is there for system needs but nobody will use it to logon), a cryptic string with which you password will be controled, an 'x' (in passwd) which means that the cryptic value is stored in the shadow file.

the solution is to set this field to "" in (both) the file(s) (for user root) so that you can then restart the computer and logon with no password.

If having the root password temporarily set to blank is a security issue, I think you could change the password without rebooting by using the following command : "chroot /mnt passwd root"... but I never tried this by myself, and i'm not sure there are no risks. Another solution would be to disconnect all network devices when doing this.

Are you asking how to get rid of Linux alltogether in the end? If that's what you want to do, just reformat that portion of your partition to your OS's filesystem type.

the easiest way isn't to use a rescue disc, it's to use the earlier advice and boot to single mode, much easier.

yes but you need to be able to enter without password... and I'm not sure many distributions allow that.

During boot up can't he enter Linuxconf by pressing "I" and then create a new user in there?

Of course he wouldn't have root privledges though...

masterc, no he can't log in at all, therefore he needs to nuke the root password, which ALL distros will allow, exluding some systems which have had security systems like bastille specifically installed.

and, of course, linuxconf should never be used.

Why not? Can you jack your system up really bad there, or does it just not really work?

it's VERY well known for screwing up most configuration files it touches. you might have noticed that newer distros will not let you install it as standard... there's a reason for that.

Thanks alot everyone... I found out my root password...

Caldera eDesktop v2.4 won't let you boot into single mode unless you know your password. And this is why:

#
# Inittab
#

# What to do in single-user mode.
~1:S:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 1
~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin