Robert B McKittrick wrote: > my system 6.0.7 does not recognize the root password I gave it when > installing. is there any way to reset root without reinstalling?
Use the installer disk in "rescue mode". Here is the official documentation for it: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch08s07.html.en But that is fairly terse. Let me say that the rescue mode looks just like the install mode initially. It will ask you keyboard and locale questions and you might wonder if you are rescuing or installing! But it will have "Rescue" in the upper left corner so that you can tell that you are not in install mode and be assured. Get the tool set up with keyboard, locale, timezone, and similar and eventually it will give you a menu with a list of actions. Here is a quick run-through. Advanced options... Rescue mode keyboard dialog ...starts networking... hostname dialog domainname dialog ...apt update release files... ...loading additional components, Retrieving udebs... ...detecting disks... Then eventually it will get to a menu "Enter rescue mode" that will ask what device to use as a root file system. It will list the partitions that it has automatically detected. If you have used a RAID then one of the menu entry items near the bottom will be "Assemble RAID array" and you should assemble the raid at that point. That will bring up the next dialog menu asking for partitions to assemble. Select the appropriate for your system. Then continue. At that point it presents a menu "Execute a shell in /dev/...". That should get you a shell on your system with the root partition mounted. It is a /bin/sh shell. I usually at that point start bash so as to have bash command line recall and editing. Then mount all of the additional disks. # /bin/bash root@hostname:~# mount -a At that point you have a root superuser shell on the system and can make system changes. After doing what needs doing you can reboot to the system. Remove the Debian install media and boot to the normal system and see if the changes were able to fix the problem. The change you want to make is to set a new root password. That is done with the "passwd" command. root@hostname:~# passwd Enter new UNIX password: Retype new UNIX password: Bob
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