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Root password gone.

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5 replies

by ratherbfishing 1 view

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I was greeted at work by our Caldera 2.3 system down, failed file system the culprit. After running e2fsck, which found a bunch of damage, the system came up and is running fine. We use it for sendmail.

However, after logging in and then su to root, it reported the root password had expired. I attempted to login as root, same thing. So I am unable to login as root. Is there any way to recover the root login at this point?

5 replies

by vinnyd

Using SU to get in as the root user is not the same as logging in as root.

AT the login prompt use the root user name and then the old root password.

You will then be prompted for a new password since the old one has expired.

Make sure you write down the new password to keep somewhere safe.

Then the SU command will work with the new root password the next time you use it.

If the passwd file has been damaged you would need emergency boot diskette to restore the passwd file in the /etc folder.

by stillatit

If answer #1 does not work, try booting to single-user mode (linux single from the boot prompt), then change the root password with the passwd command, or by using vi on /etc/passwd to delete the password field on the root account line. (Delete the characters BETWEEN the colons -- DO NOT delete any colons!)

Good luck.

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