Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES (forgot root password in LILO BOOT)
 

the system is using AVAYA 8849

Ok...so you're using Red Hat ES, but you don't tell us what version. You have some choices:

• Call Red Hat support...since you're PAYING for RHEL, they can help you.
• Boot to single-user mode and change the root password there
• Boot from your installation media, mount your hard drive manually, and edit the /etc/shadow file, removing all of the characters between the first two colons for the root entry

And since you found LQ via a Google search, if you bothered to check there, you'd have found THOUSANDS of documents (alot of them even on this very site), that have answered this question many times before.

Thank you for the reply, but i have tried booting in single user mode and i cannot change the root password.

Well, just saying "I cannot", tells us nothing. What do you mean by that? Tell us what you did, where, and what message(s) you got.

And again, since you're using RHEL, you should CALL RED HAT SUPPORT, since you're paying for it.

It would also be surprising that he is using LILO to boot a RH system...

RH uses grub/grub2, and it is possible that he is referring to the grub/lilo password rather than the system root password.

In these two cases, you have to reinstall the boot...

Maybe this would help: http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/grub.htm
as it covers both passwords.