Lost root password!!

[Stefan Srdic <linuxbox@telusplanet.net>]

hi,

Last night when I attempted to change my root password passwd bunked out on me. It crashed and I received the following message on the console:

passwd: Critical error - immediate abort

I thought that I could still use my old root password but cannot. I attempted to boot straight into a shell (init=/bin/sh) and manually expire my root password (so that I could change it on the next login) and ended up with the same results. I've also tried deleting the root passwd to see if I could then re-run passwd as root and change my passwd. No luck.

I can still log into my system as a normal user but cannot change any users passwords, I get the same error message as above.

Is passwd in Woody broken? How can I fix my broken root password without harming my system? 

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Stef


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