Howto: Reset Lost Root Password

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!
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That did it! Thanks falcon, bozo and everyone else!

That did it! Thanks falcon, bozo and everyone else!
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This works for other distributions as well. We lost our root and user account and this was the only method to successfully get it back so we could login.

The other normal methods of removing password fields from /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow all failed and we continued to get "Authentication token manipulation error" messages and could not login.

Thanks for posting the link and write up bozo! You are one clever clown!

Hey guys, Ive been reading the how-to: reset root password for days now. Nothing is working for me. I have OpenSuSe linux 10.3 when I do the mount command after fdisk -l, i get 4 different columns, 2 for each drive.

I then put in mount /dev/sda1 because it is sd not hd for me. I tried hd as well but it did not work. I get this error: Can't find /dev/sba1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab . Now What does that mean. I dont think thats the same problem Knight was having. Im really hoping I can change this root password, my brother forgot the password.

i would like to add that my linux knowledge is minimal, so some bread crumbs to help me follow would be great if anyone even reads this 1 year old thread

edited and removed!

never mind this whole issue, i was forgetting to add the /mnt part of the command in step 5

if you know the root password, but just want to change it, is it possible to just log in as su, then enter password, then type passwd root then enter a new password? or will this only change the root login password for kde/gnome, and not the root password for console?

edit: just changed it from the console anyway, don't ever really need to log in as root with the gui anyway, so if it this bit doesn't change no biggie, plus ill remember it...