If you have physical access to the machine, and can boot from a floppy, get yourself a copy of Tom's Root Boot (www.toms.net/rb/home.html) - every Sys Admin should have one of these to hand anyway.
Boot with this, and mount the root partition of the box (eg as /mnt)
vi /mnt/etc/shadow
The first line will look like this:
root:AAAAAAAAAAAA:11452:0:10000::::
Note that AAAAAAAAAAAA will be replaced with a seemingly random series of characters, this is the encrypted version of the root password.
Remove that series of characters, and reboot without the floppy
Log straight in as root (there will now be no root password) and use passwd to set the password.
On Thu, 2001-09-13 at 09:02, Gabriele Biondo wrote:
month ago i read that there is a way to gain the root privileges' over a linux box - with a little trick. Now, i do not remember that trick, but one of our sysadmins left the company and he doesn't want to give back that password. Is there anyone that knows that little trick? Is there anyone that knows how to configure lilo to protect from that
What about to put the HD in other computer and try to mount the disk with
mount /dev/xxx /mnt/otherhd ???
I think lilo doesnt protect this and this way doesnt need anyone passwd ;)
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Ogley"
-- James Ogley, Unix Systems Administrator, Pinnacle Insurance Plc james.ogley@pinnacle.co.uk www.pinnacle.co.uk +44 (0) 20 8731 3619 Using Free Software since 1994, running GNU/Linux (SuSE 7.x) This email was created and sent with Ximian Evolution 0.13
*********************************************************************** CONFIDENTIALITY. This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the named recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to another person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of Pinnacle Insurance Plc.
If you have received this e-mail in error please immediately notify our Helpdesk on +44 (0) 20 8207 9555.
This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses.
www.mimesweeper.com **********************************************************************
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq and the archives at http://lists.suse.com