Fred A. Miller wrote: > I am on the phone now with a "code jockey" friend of mine in MN, who > does ALL of his .Net teaching all over the Country on a laptop with SUSE > with VMWare. With my encouragement, he did a clean install with 10.3 > 64-bit. He called with the SAME problem I had/have today with a clean > 32-bit install - somehow during the install, the password encryption > (I'm blaming PAM for this one) gets really messed up and you don't have > root NOR the user password any longer. > > Now, it's still "there" but the system won't let you login. I called > Patrick Shanahan wondering if he'd run into this before. I had a long > time ago with IBM's unix, but had forgotten all about "shadow." Patrick > indicated that I should remove the passwords "aflicted" and that the > system would ask for a new password(s). I'll know tomorrow night if that > works. > > It didn't with my buddy from MN tonight, but he has a fingerprint reader > on his new laptop and that did "save his bacon". 10.3 wouldn't accept a > new password, but the fingerprint reader did recognize the image and he > was allowed on the box. > > I don't know how wide spread this problem is, but we sure don't need a > reviewer from ZDNet or elsewhere having the same problem!!
Recovering from a broken root password isn't really that hard. The thing to do in the past is to boot into single user mode, but many distros, openSUSE included, now ask for the root password even in that case. Nowadays, you have to boot some Live CD, mount the partition containing the /etc directory of the OS in question, and edit the /etc/shadow file to remove root's password from the password field. Ie, change: root:$2a$05$vogqUSfWAzEzUHHef/wOIe1bng1W6qYygvOFQ7bIC5bvgwN9u4aPq:13761:::::: to root::13761:::::: Now you'll have a passwordless root and you should be able to boot into single user mode (pass -s to the boot options). Then, immediately set root's password again. -- Jonathan Arnold (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Linux Brain Dump - Linux Notes, HOWTOs and Tutorials: http://www.linuxbraindump.org Daemon Dancing in the Dark, an Open OS weblog: http://freebsd.amazingdev.com/blog/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
