Recover ROOT.

[Shadow07]

I have setup a Mandrake 9.1 workstation that provides DNS. When I went through the setup procedure, I configured High Security. What has happened since the install, is the ROOT password has expired. I cannot change the password for ROOT. I can log in as myself, and change my password, but not ROOT. I also do not have any other SU on the machine.

Is there any way to recover this without re-installation?

Thanks,

Chris

 

[n0cmonkey]

Boot into single user mode and change the password there. Or use sudo, if you have it installed and configured.

 

[rmrf]

Are you using lilo or grub as a bootloader? if you are using lilo, at the selection screen, press ctrl-x, then type linux single. To change the root password, type passwd at the command prompt, and you can enter a new password without having to know the old one. when you are done, type exit, and it will boot your machine normally.

 

[chsh1ca]

Alternately, you can boot from lilo to a single-user shell by using something along the lines of:
linux init=/bin/sh

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: chsh1ca
Alternately, you can boot from lilo to a single-user shell by using something along the lines of:
linux init=/bin/sh

If you do this, you will have to remount / as read/write by doing mount / -o remount,rw

 

[Shadow07]

Cool. I don't know if I have SUDO installed or not. I will try this.

 

[pitupepito2000]

Another thing that you can do is plug that hard drive to another machine or use a cd or floppy linux distribution and chroot to that hard drive and then you should be able to change your root password

I hope this helps,
pitupepito