Re: Lost root access :-(

[Frank Mehnert <fm3@os.inf.tu-dresden.de>]

On Tue, 27 Jun 2000, Frank van der Hulst wrote:

> Is there a way to login as root, and specify the shell to run?

Very easy if you have physical access to the machine: 
Reboot, hold the Shift key while LILO is booting, enter the default
booting image name (e.g. Linux) and append

  init=/bin/bash

as booting parameter on the LILO command line. Then wait until Linux
is up: If necessary, mount /usr partition and remount the root partition
as writable:

  mount /usr
  mount -o remount -w /

Edit /etc/password with your favourite editor and save it. After that, you
have to make sure that the file is written back to the harddisk. Finally,
reboot:

  sync
  mount -o remount -r /
  umount /usr
  reboot

Frank
-- 
Frank Mehnert
## Dept. of Computer Science, Dresden University of Technology, Germany ##
## E-Mail: fm3@os.inf.tu-dresden.de    http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/~fm3 ##