On Sunday 16 May 2004 12:25, howard blomfield wrote: > in all the confusion with cdrom > cables falling out/not being able to boot from a floppy etc i think i > have scrambled both root & user passwords
This should be quite easy to fix. Disconnect ( As in pull the plug out ) from the net and boot the 'puter with a Linux boot-disk. Mount the partition which has the /etc filesystem on it. /dev/hda9 (In Howard's case, iirc) Edit the file /etc/shadow to remove the second field for the user who has forgotton his p/w Then as the root user change ( for example ):- root:$1$mrOheWcA$35ey/kyasdfasdfdfgac/1:12498:0::::: to root::12498:0::::: Root now no longer has any password. Recreate the password:- passwd You can now change the users' passwords thus: passwd Joe It's safe to put the 'puter on line again now. ( ok, I am paranoid ) Use a sequence of numbers and letters which you will remember but will be meaningless to others. I use old, abandoned, telephone numbers, and bits of street names dredged up from the past. Don't use a word from the dictionary, or a name of any kind. Your keyboard problem in Mdk can be solved by selecting a US keyboard. there is also a utility called xmodmap which you can use to alter key to code mapping. I believe there is a GUI frontend for it, but I forget the name. -- Sincerely etc. Christopher Sawtell NB. This PC runs Linux. If you find a virus apparently from me, it has forged the e-mail headers on someone else's machine. Please do not notify me when this occurs. Thanks.
