On Sat, 2007-10-13 at 16:26 +0200, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
On Oct 13 2007 08:03, Glenn Holmer wrote:
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.
... which is the way how it has been done ever since. But you need /bin/bash otherwise you get, as pointed out, a sh-compat shell.
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).
Actually, you use
umount -a reboot -f
And I don't see why passwd would not work. Just make sure your root volume is actually read-write (which is the case when using an initrd created with suse), otherwise use
mount / -o remount,rw
On Oct 13 2007 09:07, Glenn Holmer wrote:
On Saturday 13 October 2007 08:48, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Technically, when invoked as /bin/sh, BASH operates in its Bourne Shell compatibility mode, which deprives you of many of BASH's innovations. Use /bin/bash to get full functionality.
/bin/sh is a symlink to bash on 10.3
That does not matter. When called as sh, it operates in dumb mode.
I have used Unix/Linux for a couple decades and have not yet had a root password issue. But I know there is always tomorrow. I will be keeping this e-mail. Perhaps this is also on the wiki? It is surely good info. If also a bit of a security issue. -- Roger Oberholtzer OPQ Systems / Ramböll RST Ramböll Sverige AB Kapellgränd 7 P.O. Box 4205 SE-102 65 Stockholm, Sweden Tel: Int +46 8-615 60 20 Fax: Int +46 8-31 42 23 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org