Re: Lost password need help!

[Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org>]

eben@gmx.us wrote: 
> On 11/22/24 11:56, The David wrote:
> > We have been using the debian 3.2.0-4-686-pae for our company. We are moving to another state and we forgot the password. Is there anyway to recover this without losing data? Thank you.
> 
> Boot off rescue media, mount the victim's / partition somewhere, then edit
> <mount_point>/etc/shadow to change the second field (deliminated by colons)
> to the null string.  An asterisk means "this user cannot log in", so not
> that.  Then sync, unmount, and reboot.  The first two steps may be implied
> in the third, but it won't hurt if they're done explicitly.
> 
> So no, you can't recover it easily (the encryption is one way), but you can
> reset it.

If it isn't encrypted:

Boot. Pause the boot on the bootloader, and add to the kernel
command line:

  init=/bin/bash

Let it continue booting.

When it gives you a shell, mount the root partition read/write:

  mount -o remount,rw /

Change the root password:

  passwd

  sync

  reboot

You now know the root password, and after logging in as root can
change any other user's password.

-dsr-