On Friday 12 October 2007 11:16, Jonathan Arnold wrote:
Recovering from a broken root password isn't really that hard. The thing to do in the past is to boot into single user mode, but many distros, openSUSE included, now ask for the root password even in that case.
Nowadays, you have to boot some Live CD, mount the partition containing the /etc directory of the OS in question, and edit the /etc/shadow file to remove root's password from the password field.
You can just enter "init=/bin/sh" on the Boot Options line of the GRUB boot screen. The system will boot straight into bash and you can use your favorite editor on /etc/shadow. Do NOT use the passwd command at this point, you will have 0-length /etc/passwd and/or /etc/shadow files after you reboot... I'll leave it to somebody smarter than me to explain why since I plain don't know :) After removing the password, use ctrl-alt-delete to restart the machine (if you use "exit" or control-D, you get a kernel panic / hard wait). -- "After the vintage season came the aftermath - and Cenbe." Glenn Holmer (Q-Link: ShadowM) http://www.lyonlabs.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org