I am going though a book trying to learn linux, one of the tasks is to change the root password by booting into single user mode.

According to what I have found after I get into single user mode I should just have to type in passwd and it should prompt me for a new password... but it doesn't. tried passwd root with the same effect, same with passwd -S and passwd -S root. Nothing seems to work

anything ya'll can think of I have over looked?

this is RH6

this does work in multi-user mode.

In redhat 6 you won't be able to change your root password from single user mode

try this in single user mode

this will delete your root password.
So that you can create a new password at next login for root

that worked :-D
Thanks!!!
why would that work and not the password change?

Hello and welcome to LinuxQuestions,

How exactly did you enter single user mode? Explain in detail what you did. What's the output of
I just tried it on a fresh install of RHEL 6.2 and it works as expected. Unless you've set up your system 'out of the ordinary' you should be able to use passwd.

Looking forward to your participation in the forums. Have fun with Linux.

Kind regards,

Eric

I am not very sure if I can answer that correctly but in RHEL 6 it is not possible to change password using single user mode.
Even I had faced this thing and came up with the command which already posted
If you are satisfied with the solution kindly mark the thread as " solved " as it may help others

Hi,

Nice call, but can you elaborate a bit on why it doesn't work in RHEL 6? I just tried it on a RHEL 6.2 installation and it works as usual, just running passwd from the console in single user mode.

Kind regards,

Eric

No sir,
As I said I am not very sure with that because I was also facing the same issue where I tried deleting the root password to give a new one.

Now I can't get back into that scenario to check the location of passwd command

I think schrodingore might help to give the location of passwd

notabley I havn't figued out how to update it yet (still getting a "this system is not registered with RHM") so that could be my issue.

Moved from Cisco to Linux so trying to figure this stuff out :-P

Thanks again for all the help

/etc/passwd
I think

Is this the file your looking for?

Hi,

Without registering your system with RHN (Red Hat Network) you don't have access to updates. So first you'll have to run:
If you haven't paid for a subscription from Red Hat then you will not be able to update your system once the trial period is over. You should know that Red Hat is not free, so you either pay for a subscription and use their network for your updates or you change to a free clone of Red Hat, like CentOS or Scientific Linux. The fact that your system is not registered with Red Hat has nothing to do with the fact that you cannot change your root password in single user mode AFAIK.

Kind regards,

Eric

just saw your
which passwd
line

it is in /usr/bin/passwd

alrighty
thanks

use to windows where if something doesn't work right a few updates might fix it.

Hi,

No, that's the file that holds all the users on your system. The output of the command
should give you
Kind regards,

Eric

it does

/usr/bin/passwd

hmm notabley doing a
cat /usr/bin/passwd
screws up your command line :-P