Re: "forgot password" workarounds not working

[Roberto Sanchez <roberto@familiasanchez.net>]

Haines Brown wrote:
> I have sarge I installed on a new hard disk, and I can log in OK, but
> I decided to see if I could log in without a password. I tried two
> methods: 
>
> 1. I booted knoppix and opened a terminal. In it I tried to do:
>
>    $ mount -t ext3 /dev/sda /mnt/hd
>
>    in order to then run the chroot and the passwd commands, but when I
>    tried to mount the disk I got the error "only root can do that". Is
>    the only way out of this to know root's password?
Knoppix makes you an unprivileged user by default.  However, you can use 
sudo without a password:

$ sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sda /mnt/hd

That should get you what you want.

> 2. In grub, I edited the kernel line for the disk I wanted to boot by
>    appending to that line the words: "single init=/bin/sh". This
>    brought me to a sh2.5-2b# prompt, but when I tried to issue the
>    passwd command from there, I only got the "authentication token
>    lock busy" error. When I have trouble with lock files I usually
>    just delete them, but don't know where this one is or if I can
>    delete it.
>
> Any suggestions?
If you want to reset a user password (or even root), then boot with a 
live CD, mount the partition and edit /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow 
(depending on which type of passwords were used on the system) and then 
remove the password from the file.  After you reboot the system, then 
you can log in as whatever user without a password.

-Roberto

--
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://familiasanchez.net/~roberto