[PLUG] Getting a root prompt upon booting

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Mon Dec 1 17:30:03 UTC 2003


On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, Russell Senior wrote:

> That will work.  The other solution is to boot linux with the
> init=/bin/sh boot option trick, and edit /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow as
> appropriate (removing the password hash).  That will allow you to
> reboot and login root without a password, which is sufficient to reset
> the password to whatever you like (paying more attention this time).

  Thanks to all of you who reminded me of the 'init=/bin/bash' addendum to
the boot command. That's what I had forgotten (but I'll save this for the
next time).

  Frustratingly, when I was at the boot prompt I discovered that I had no
editor available to me. No vim, emacs or joe! Worse, when I tried 'ls /usr',
the shell prompt immediately returned; no listing of files or directories in
/usr.

  In retrospect, I think that I typed the new password correctly both times,
but something broke behind the scenes. Rather than futz with it (since I
really haven't the time -- my apologies to you, Russell), I'm just going to
do a fresh install of the distribution for the purchaser.

Thanks,

Rich

-- 
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>




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