[lug] root password

[Zan Lynx]

Heh.  Well, this can actually happen, you know. :)

I've forgotten the password I set before.  It's especially easy if you
use sudo as Bear suggests, since you never really need the root
password.  Except for when you do. :)

In order:
- Add "single" to the kernel command line.  Doesn't work with all
distros.

- Add init=/bin/sh to the kernel command line.  Then remount / as rw.

- Boot a rescue CD or floppy.

- Take the boot disk to a different Linux machine and mount and edit it
there.

In my opinion if someone is really looking for cracking advice and their
sysadmin left the server physically available, well, that sysadmin
deserves anything he gets for assuming ignorance on the part of
others. :)

On Wed, 2006-08-02 at 10:16 -0600, Bear Giles wrote:
> Gordon Golding wrote:
> 
> >Somebody reset the root password on a shared machine and now can't remember what they set it to.
> >
> >What's the best way to fix?
> >  
> >
> ROTFL!  Such a transparent "social engineering" attempt to get us to 
> tell you how to hack into the system!!!
> 
> Seriously, if somebody still has root access my advice would be to set 
> up 'sudo' for everyone authoritized to have root access.  It's one of 
> the few options since it makes it easy to lock out people with former 
> root access, the "somebody reset the root password on a shared 
> machine..." approach doesn't work well in practice.
> 
> Bear
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-- 
Zan Lynx <zlynx at acm.org>
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