Howto: Reset Lost Root Password

Thanks Bozo. I have copied that just in case.
It almost came up when I had to work on my Fathers computer last week. He had forgot what it was. And I had lost where I had written it down when I had set up his computer.
Luckily it came to mind, but for us aging folks on a computer we don't use daily it would be all too easy to forget the password.

My motherboard recently died, and when I installed the new one, I found my root password didn't work (for whatever reason). I tried the above methods without sucess. (Not trying to argue; it's just what happened.) On Novell's website, I found this page. It worked like a charm first time, no problems. I offer it here as another alternative. In case the link doesn't work or dies, I'll paste the article here. (FYI; I used it on Suse 10.1)
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I tried this and didn't have any luck. I get:
Cannot open /dev/urandom for reading: no such file or dir
Cannot create salt for blowfish crypt
Error: password NOT changed
passwd: Authentication token manipulation error

I've also tried editing passwd and shadow, as mentioned in the original post, and when I log back in as a regular user and type su in a terminal window, I'm prompted for a password. I've tried just hitting enter, and I'm told that it's the incorrect password.

Any ideas?

I tried this and didn't have any luck. I get:
Cannot open /dev/urandom for reading: no such file or dir
Cannot create salt for blowfish crypt
Error: password NOT changed
passwd: Authentication token manipulation error

I've also tried editing passwd and shadow, as mentioned in the original post, and when I log back in as a regular user and type su in a terminal window, I'm prompted for a password. I've tried just hitting enter, and I'm told that it's the incorrect password.

Any ideas?
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I'm sorry this reply is so late, I didn't see your post.

I'm not sure from your post what went wrong, but I suspect in Step 5 you didn't understand what you were to enter. Forgive me if I'm explaining basics you're familiar with, but I don't know your background/experience with Linux, and I'm just guessing what went wrong.

In Linux, hard drives are referred to by a letter, i.e. hda would mean the first hard drive, hdb the second, and so forth. Partitions on that hard drive are referred to by a number, so hda1 is the first partition on the first hard drive, hdb1 is the first partition on the second hard drive. What should have been entered in the mount command was /dev/hd followed by a letter and a number. Step four was to find out which partition was the root partition. Here is my result from fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/hda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1913 15366141 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 1914 19457 140922180 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 1914 2012 795186 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda6 2013 3971 15735636 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 3972 4070 795186 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda8 4071 19456 123588013+ 83 Linux[/b]

The information you want is in the first column. The last column is how you find which partition you want. Note that none of them say root, which is what you're looking for. In my case, the first three are obviously not it, since they're w95. Neither is the swap patition it. I know that my home partition is my largest, so that eliminates the last one. So what I'm looking for is the fourth line, ./ev/hda6 (The sixth partition on the first hard drive). So in Step 5 I entered mount /dev/hda6.

Note also in Step 7 the command is passwd root not password root, and in Step 8 it's umount /mnt, not unmount /mnt. I don't know how many times it took me to learn that one.

I don't know if I picked up on any mistakes you may have made, but even if I'm way off base, this may help someone else.

Good luck, and have fun!

Edit: The quote screwed up the columns, and I don't know why; tried correcting once, ti didn't work, and now the cat wants out. I think you can figure out where the column breaks go.

bozo

I tried your method a couple of times, following it to the letter, and each time I got the same error as KnightWolfJK. I had previously attempted to reset root password as suggested by anomie and broch which was unsuccessful, and I don't know if that had anything to do with this method not working.

Do you have any further suggestions?
Thanks

bozo

I tried your method a couple of times, following it to the letter, and each time I got the same error as KnightWolfJK. I had previously attempted to reset root password as suggested by anomie and broch which was unsuccessful, and I don't know if that had anything to do with this method not working.

Do you have any further suggestions?
Thanks
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Hi Baby Tux
those steps are correct as with most distros i normally mount the partitions manually under /mnt then issue chroot. In the case of suse u have to mount /, /var/ and /usr; u also have to start the service random with the command /etc/init.d/random start. This is one the first services suse starts after loading the kernel. Hope that work

elisa

Thanks elisa!

I attempted to do what you suggested, however when I executed "/etc/init.d/random start" the following line was shown:

Initialzing random number generator/etc/init.d/random: line 40: /var/lib/misc/random-seed: No such file or directory
chmod: cannot access '/var/lib/misc/random-seed': No such file of directory
failed

Now I'm not sure if I was doing what you suggested correctly. Would you post the complete syntax so that I can be sure?

Thanks elisa!

I attempted to do what you suggested, however when I executed "/etc/init.d/random start" the following line was shown:

Initialzing random number generator/etc/init.d/random: line 40: /var/lib/misc/random-seed: No such file or directory
chmod: cannot access '/var/lib/misc/random-seed': No such file of directory
failed

Now I'm not sure if I was doing what you suggested correctly. Would you post the complete syntax so that I can be sure?
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the syntax look correct, since the command starts up. question now is: How u installed /var on a partition of its own ? if so, then u will have to mount the partition containing /var as well before trying to start the random service.

Thanks!

Had to play around a bit, but I finally got it!

Thanks!

Had to play around a bit, but I finally got it!
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Thanks for the posts everyone.

falcon would you mind posting exactly what you did to get things to work?

I am stuck at same place you were in your previous post.

Thanks!

I followed the steps posted by bozo, up to and including step 6.
I then entered the following:

1. I entered "su"
2. I then ran the command "/etc/init.d/random start"
3. Finally, I entered "passwd". This promted me to enter a new password

Once that is done, reboot. I hope it works for you to!