Thursday, June 30, 2011

[LINUX_Newbies] Re: Why set up DOS? Was: Wont boot..help

 



I've got to agree with Chris on this one, why a DOS partition?

There are actually several methods to get into a computer with forgotten/lost/changed root password:

Option 1.
Boot the system into single user mode. At the boot prompt (how you get this depends upon the boot loader used) type:

linux single

This gets you in as root with no password. Set a new password using the passwd command then sync & reboot the system.

Option 2.
Another option is to boot off a floppy or cd, mount your original root directory and edit the file /etc/shadow (from your original install of course). Open the file in your preferred editor, find the line that starts:

root:

Change the line to read:

root::::

yes, that's four colons, nothing else. Depending upon your distro you may also need to edit the file /etc/passwd. This file looks a lot like the last one but all you do is delete the 'x' that is between the first 2 colons.

Save the file/s, reboot the system and you should be able login as root without a password. Set a new password as normal.

No need for DOS to save you. :)

Cheers,
Mark K.

--- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com, c beck <usabecker@...> wrote:
>
> I'm curious how giving a partition to DOS provides an advantage over
> another linux install or a live cd? Primary partitions are fairly
> valuable if you are multibooting with windows, right? Thanks for any
> insight.
>
> Cheers, ~Chris
>

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