Replies interlaced below.
At 10:06 AM 9/6/99 +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote [in part]:
>My 'nice new' system is an oldish 486DX2 with a SCSI 1G drive ALL given to
Linux
>(100M swap, 300M / for system, and remainder for /usr) and SCSI CD, RH6.0 with
>Gnome on default.
>
>
>(1)...I decided that my
>root password was not 'secure' enough and changed it on my new system. Another
>'obvious' password, so, naturally, I didn't write it down! ...Can I get
back inside the system without a complete re-installation?
Yes. Three methods to try, from easiest to hardest (the easy ones don't
always work, but I think they will with RH).
A. reboot, and at the LILO: prompt, enter "linux single" (or "somethingelse
single" if your install isn't named linux). This should get you into
single-user mode as root, no login needed.
B. reboot, and at the LILO: prompt, enter "init=/bin/sh". This should bypass
the init process and put you directlt into a command-line shell.
C. if all else fails, get a rescue disk, the kind that boots a ramdisk root
filesystem (e.g., tomsrtbt; on older RH Linuxes, the installation was also a
rescue disk, but I think RH 6 changed that). Then mount your hard disk at a
convenient mount point (e.g., "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt").
Whichever method gets you in, then use a text editor (vi, or whatever you
prefer) to delete the root password from /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow
(whichever you system uses). Reboot normally -- be sure to use a method that
syncs the disks, though, like the command "reboot" -- and you should be able
to log in as root without needing to give a password.
>(2) What would be the process for getting an oldish, full-length controller
card
>in this machine? (**as well as** the SCSI)? I have to describe the cards...
>they have two ribbon cables to the drive, a wider one and a narrower one, and
>the controller can handle two drives... so is it old IDE or even ESDI???
>From your description, this sounds like a really old ST506 (have I got that
right) controller, the kind that preceded IDE and ESDI. I don't think Linux
supports them.
>(3) Having told the installation that I had a 256k video controller, I find
it's
>a 1M card. How do I change the system without a complete reinstallation
>(assuming that I don't have to reinstall to clear the root password snafu...)
This only matters for X11. Fix it by running whichever app you like for
setting up X configuration (I'm partial to xf86config, but there are others).
>and,
>(4) How do you normally shut down Gnome?
Can't help much with this one, since I don't use Gnome. The pop-up menu
usually has an "exit choice", but I don't know about Gnome-on-Red-Hat
specifically.
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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