Forgotten Root Password

*Red Hat Linux 9: Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide

*Forgotten Password

*Help! I forgot my root password. How do I log in now?

*You can log in using single-user mode and create a new root password.

*To enter single-user mode, reboot your computer. If you use the default boot loader, GRUB, you can enter single user mode by performing the following:

*1. At the boot loader menu, type e to enter into editing mode.

*2. You will be presented with a boot entry listing. Look for the line that looks similar to the following:

*kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-0.4 ro root=/dev/hda2

*3. Press the arrow key until this line is highlighted and press e.

*4. Press the Spacebar once to add a blank space, then add the word single to tell GRUB to boot into single-user Linux mode. Press Enter to make the editing change take effect.

*5. You will be brought back to the edit mode screen. From here, press b and GRUB will boot single-user Linux mode. After it finishes loading, you will be presented with a shell prompt similar to the following:

*sh-2.05#

*6. You can now change the root password by typing

*bash# passwd root

*7. You will be asked to re-type the password for verification. Once you are finished, the password will be changed. You can then reboot by typing reboot at the prompt; then you can log in to root as you normally would.

*http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/