31 Jul
2005
31 Jul
'05
13:07
On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 14:14:50 -0700 (PDT) Chaitanya Krishna A <icymist82@yahoo.com> wrote: > I did use the rescue CD. I don't understand this chroot thing. Can you > elaborate on that a bit. chroot(1) allows you to run a shell with a different root file system. When you boot the rescue system, your root file system is in a ramdisk. But if you need to reset your root password, what you do is: 1. Mount the root file system from your normal boot HD: mount /dev/hda1 /mnt 2. make that the new root file system: chroot /mnt You will now be in a shell where it thinks that /mnt is the root file system instead of the ramdisk / 3. Run the appropriate commands such as passwd(1). 4. Exit chroot like you would exit any other shell. If I remember in your case, you messed up either permissions or ownership. You do not necessarily need to use chroot for that. All the executable files in bin, /usr/bin, /sbin should be owned by root. But there are some exceptions for group. (from /sbin) -rwxr-sr-x 1 root shadow 6808 2005-03-21 10:53 unix2_chkpwd -rwxr-sr-x 1 root shadow 37483 2005-03-19 14:22 unix_chkpwd -- Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9