On Friday 02 December 2016 06:16:31 Jonathan Dowland wrote: > On Thu, Dec 01, 2016 at 06:06:34PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: > > On Thursday 01 December 2016 15:30:12 emetib wrote: > > [use sudo] > > > The last time I tried that, some years ago, it demanded the old > > passwd first. I think that was about Red Hat 7.1's day. I'd been > > using it since 1998 and 5.0. > > > > > i hope that this helps some for future reference. > > > > If no pw is needed, great. > > `passwd` invoked as the root user does not require you to provide the > current password. You can set the password for any user, including the > default user of root. So you would need to invoke 'sudo passwd' to > change/set the root password without being prompted for the existing > one.
That policy has been changed then. Its been quite some time, possibly a decade or more since I have attempted that procedure. The last time I tried that, I was asked for the old password, and having forgotten it, was refused. I wound up taking that drive to another machine and removing the root pw in both passwd and shadow files. Then I could set a new one and did when the drive was re-installed in the machine it ran. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>