Forgot root password

[chief_sealth]

I have some things I need to do today, but I can’t remember the root password. :-(. It’s been about a week since I last needed it. Anyone have suggestions to shake it out of my head?

[wolfi323]

@chief_sealth

Anyone have suggestions to shake it out of my head?

Not really.
But you could set a new one, there are several ways to do that, e.g.:

• press ‘e’ at the boot menu, append “init=/bin/sh” to the line starting with “linux” and press ‘F10’ to boot to a minimal text system without the need of a password. Then run “passwd” to change the root password (you might have to remount / read-write though, with “mount / -o rw,remount”)
• boot from a LiveCD/DVD/USB, run “su”, mount your root partition (e.g. “mount /dev/sda1 /mnt”, chroot to it (“chroot /mnt”), and run “passwd”.

[chief_sealth]

@wolfi323

Not really.
But you could set a new one, there are several ways to do that, e.g.:

• press ‘e’ at the boot menu, append “init=/bin/sh” to the line starting with “linux” and press ‘F10’ to boot to a minimal text system without the need of a password. Then run “passwd” to change the root password (you might have to remount / read-write though, with “mount / -o rw,remount”)
• boot from a LiveCD/DVD/USB, run “su”, mount your root partition (e.g. “mount /dev/sda1 /mnt”, chroot to it (“chroot /mnt”), and run “passwd”.

Thanks. I went ahead and reset it in single user mode.