Mr. O, Typically Garl's suggestion of single user mode (i.e. linux (or whatever your kernel name is) single) at the lilo/grub/boot loader of choice prompt is going to be easiest, assuming you have physical access to the box (and the reset switch).
If the boot loader is password protected, the suggestion of bootable linux distro will surely work. In addition to the distros mentioned, @stake has a couple of versions out as schwag - we call it the 'Pocket Security Toolkit - PST' it has a workable X, various tools and docs - our unofficial slogan for it is 'with PST, now grandma can hack.' Let me know if anyone wants an iso (its based off trinux), and I'll try to dig one up. It also has an NT/Windows password changer, which is what I use it for mostly. Assuming you have a local account sans physical access, there have been a number of local linux vulns out, with many of them being in 3rd party packages included with RedHat. The most popular recent one I can think of is probably ptrace(). Plenty of exploit code available. Oh also, as a note, as Jamie mentions and Garl seconds, most linuxes will be using shadow passwords. Unless you are root, this will be uneditable - it's root-owned, typically mode 600. Course, this is irrelevant with a bootable distro. And, if the box is somehow still using passwd w/o shadow, feel free to grab the hashes and run them through John (http://www.openwall.com/john/). Anyway, hope this helps (just make sure the box is yours :>) Jason >Yeah.... that would prettymuch do it, but surely >redscat uses shadow >passwords... just edit the /etc/shadow, (and or />etc/password) and >remove the encrypted password portion of the root >entry. then login >as root (hit enter for password) then type passwd (at the console)to >setup a new password. >Jamie __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
