Root password problems

Forgive the question, but could you not just take the drive out, mount
it on another machine, copy all of the critical files, and then just do
a reinstall?


David Demland wrote:

> I would love to have several days, but this is a business system that has to
> get up ASAP. The other odd thing is that when I copy the file the owner is
> shadow. Does any one know why this would happen. If I am in a shell why am I
> not root?
>
> David
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us]On Behalf Of
> technomage
> Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2003 1:14 PM
> To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> Subject: Re: Root password problems
>
>
> > can you copy the shadow files off?
> if so, get another box, use john the ripper and sit back for a while (it may
> take anywhere from 2 hours to several days to break the passwords).
>
> Mage
>
> On Saturday 12 July 2003 12:57 pm, David Demland wrote:
>
>>I have a few Debian boxes, and a FreeBSD box, that no one knows the root
>>password for. I have booted with an init=/bin/sh then tried passwd. This
>>has worked only on one of the boxes. The rest get an error message of:
>>
>>passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
>>
>>My research shows that I should backup the shadow file and run the pwconv
>>command to regenerate the shadow file. I can not do this on these machines
>>because they have mounted the root file system as read-only and will not
>>allow me to update the shadow file. What do I have to do to fix this
>>problem so I can run the passwd command on these machines?
>>
>>David
>>
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>
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