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Recover your lost root password in Linux

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http://tips4linux.com – Once in a lifetime you might forget your root password. If that happens, reboot your distro and at the GRUB prompt press “e” to edit the first line. Make sure the new entry sais “linux single”. Press “b” to boot the new entry line. You’ll be thrown into single user mode and given a BASH prompt. Do a cd /etcnano passwd Now see that line that sais root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash somewhere at the top of the file? Make it look like root::0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash by deleting the “x” between the two “:“. Save the file. Now open up the shadow file in nano: nano shadow Make the first line look like this: root:::: by deleting every encrypted password. Save. Reboot and log in as a normal user, then set a new root password: supasswd (HowTos)

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Submitted by colm on 07/28/2009 – Made popular on 07/28/2009

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I've lost the root password to my system (or, I've lost all my passwords to the system, and I need a root account for reseting it so I can use sudo). The root account was locked with "passwd -l" so I tried booting into recovery mode, but I later discovered that I needed a password for dropping into root shell.

got a root password to forget? 2 years 44 weeks ago

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What am I missing? I change the root password on a unix machine, then try to log in with that password. PasswordAuthentication is set to yes in sshd_config and the sshd daemon has been restarted.

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How can I recover root password :wall:

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Need super duper help 2 years 32 weeks ago

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