On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 12:47:08PM +0100, mrr wrote: > On 15/01/2015 01:00, Gary Dale wrote: > >On 14/01/15 04:26 PM, Rob Owens wrote: > >>On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 03:07:09PM -0500, Comer Duncan wrote: > >>>I recently got wheezy up and running. I installed xfce4 and like it. > >>> > >>>However, today in the process of trying to spawn a root terminal (in > >>>Accessories) and going through a cycle of trying to get authorized but > >>>being prevented by repeated complaints that the system password I > >>>used was > >>>not correct, I now find that I can not get logged in in single-user > >>>mode! > >>>I have thus royally screwed up. So, how can I get the system password > >>>changed to something new? > >>> > >>>Thanks for help and apologies for making such an error. > >>Boot using a Live CD, then as root: > >> > >>mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 (or whatever device is your root partition) > >>chroot /mnt/sda1 > >>passwd > >I'd change the chroot command to > > chroot /mnt/sda1 bash > > > >to ensure you get the correct shell. System Rescue CD, for example, uses > >zsh by default so chrooting with specifying the shell will get you a > >not-found error. > > > > > > Wouldn't it work too if you delete the root line in /etc/shadow ? > When I say delete, I mean just the hash, you would leave a line: > > root: > I tried this with a test user and it worked. But there are fields after the password hash that remain. My user's line in /etc/shadow looked like this:
junk::16450:0:99999:7::: I was able to login as the 'junk' user without a password. I wasn't even asked for a password. However, 'su junk' from my regular user account did not work. > And just for fun (well maybe I'll try this later) if you take your > user hash in the same file and copy it in the place of the root > hash, wouldn't root get the same password as the user one? > I tested this too, and it worked for both a login and for su. Thanks for the ideas! -Rob
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