Re: root password forgotten
On 25-Jan-2002 Michael Jinks wrote:
> One thing you can do: hold left shift during boot to get a prompt, and
> at the "LILO:" prompt enter "Linux init=/bin/sh" (possibly replacing
> "Linux" with another image name if your box doesn't have the default).
>
> The root fs will come up read-only. To be able to mount other
> filesystems and otherwise bring the box to a usable state,
>
> mount -o rw,remount /
>
(lower case 'linux init=/bin/sh' usually)
To further explain, what this does is tell the kernel what is the first process
to run. Usually this is /sbin/init which then begins the run level scripts.
Instead you are telling linux to just run a shell. The shell will be run as
root (because the first process is UID 0). The only thing active is the kernel
and your shell. No other system initialization has been done. At this point
you can fix practically anything.
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