Am Montag, 11. Dezember 2000 04:38 schrieb Anthony Ryan: > Hi, > I recently got a 486 with Debian 2.1 pre-loaded. I'm also > just getting into unix for the first time, and want a machine to muck > around with. The problem is, I don't know the password or login. I > don't have the OS on an installer disk, so would rather not resort to > wiping the hard drive and starting from scratch. If it comes to that, > how big is it? Is there a work-around?
If it is booting via lilo, and lilo is installed without password protection/timeout=0, then you can simply put some stuff on the bootprompt like: lilo: linux init=/bin/bash You will get into a shell then. Just do: # mount / -oremount,rw Make a backup of your /etc/shadow, and remove the encrypted password between the ":" for root. Then: # mount / -oremount,ro and reboot. Your system now has an empty password ;-) -Cajus
