If you have a rescue floppy or a normal boot floppy with lilo you can do:

linux single

should put you in single user, no password mode.

> ok i goofed; i have a typo in /etc/inittab.  guess i set the run level to 9 instead of 3.  that's what happens when you learn 10-key on two different keyboard layouts.
> 
> on this machine, i normally  boot from a floppy to hda5; i.e., lilo is not installed.  but booting here fails because obviously run level 9 does not exist.  "boot -s" i thought would work around so I could fix /etc/inittab, but it is not booting into single mode. not sure why.   how can i get to that file to fix it?