Over a year later forgot dsl password... now what

mrhobbeys · 07-04-2009, 09:54 AM

So its been over 500 days since I last logged into this machine; I thought I had an easy password set, but this turns out not to be the case. Its a really old P1 that I have dsl on and I have no idea what my password is.

I also feel like I was only LUCKY to get the dsl to install in the first place because I had to open the CD drive and actually use my hand to spin the CD and then close the drive fast enough and at the right time so that it would keep spinning in order to get a proper read (odd right?) so please don't tell me to reinstall.

pixellany · 07-04-2009, 10:03 AM

Assuming that DSL uses GRUB, this is easy. When the GRUB menu appears, it any key to stop the count, then hit "e" for edit. Select the kernel line, "e" again, and add the word "single" (no quotes) to the end. Hit enter, and then "b" to boot.

The machine will come up in single user mode, running as root with no password. You can then set new passwords as needed.

eg:
passwd root
passwd <username>

mrhobbeys · 07-04-2009, 10:20 AM

That was great! Thank you very much.

Does that work on all distros?

AlucardZero · 07-04-2009, 10:22 AM

No. Many will prompt for the root password before letting you into single user mode. When that's the case, you need to boot from a live CD, mount the local hard drive, and clear the password (or chroot into the drive and run 'passwd' to change it).

cmdln · 07-04-2009, 03:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlucardZero

No. Many will prompt for the root password before letting you into single user mode. When that's the case, you need to boot from a live CD, mount the local hard drive, and clear the password (or chroot into the drive and run 'passwd' to change it).

http://www.cmdln.org/2009/01/18/howt...ord-on-debian/.

That password can also typiccally be bypassed if you append init=/bin/bash to the params as well.