RE: Cannot Login
> From: Kevin Ross [mailto:kevin@familyross.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 5:45 PM
>
> > From: Raquel [mailto:raquel@thericehouse.net]
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 5:18 PM
> >
> > I have an odd problem that's developed, and have spent all afternoon
> > trying to figure out what's going on. My web server (running Lenny)
> is
> > running and serving pages. However, I cannot login to the server via
> > SSH or at the console, which means that I cannot apply updates,
> change
> > configuration, or even get in to figure out what's going on.
> >
> > Any ideas on what happened or on how to get in? I have access to the
> > physical machine.
> >
>
> Boot from a Live or Rescue CD, mount your / partition, edit the
/etc/shadow
> file, and delete the password for root. Reboot without the CD, and login
> with root with no password. Immediately create a password with the
"passwd"
> command.
>
Oh, and just in case you're not familiar with editing the shadow file, when
I say to delete the password for root, I don't mean deleting the entire
line. I mean removing the encrypted password between the first and second
":", so the two colons are right next to each other. When you're done, the
line with "root" in it will look something like this:
root::13725:0:99999:7:::
Hope this helps!
-- Kevin
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