OK, I guess I reached my frustration threshold.
I am running RedHat 8.0, using GRUB to manage booting alternate systems. At
the time I installed it, I opted for an encrypted password for GRUB, and I
have either forgotten it, or mistyped it, because I was unable to get GRUB
to accept it (kept getting the "Failed!" message).
I booted to Linux, and deleted the password entry in the
/boot/grub/grub.conf file, and was able to generate a new password entry,
but in cleartext. After reading the RedHat and GRUB documents, it appears I
must be missing something simple in my attempts to recreate an encrypted
password. The documents say to run the entry in grub.conf should be
"password --md5 PASSWORD", where "PASSWORD" is the encrypted password. The
encrypted password can be generated by typing "md5crypt" at the grub prompt:
grub then prompts you for the password, and it returns the encrypted hash of
the password you entered. The documents then say you "cut and paste the
encrypted password to your configuration file." The grub command line
interface does not appear to give you any capability for cutting and
pasting, so short of copying this string manually, then entering it into
grub.conf, I cannot see any way of doing this. (I've tried it a couple of
times, and cannot seem to get it right!)
The other way the document says to do it is to type "grub-md5-crypt" in a
Linux shell (as root) to get the encrypted password, but, even though the
file /sbin/grub-md5-crypt exists, the system cannot execute. I am guessing,
but don't know, that grub needs to somehow run under Linux to get this to
work, but all my attempts to get it to run except at boot time have been
unsuccessful.
Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Ernie
Ernie L. Bérriz
Mesa, Arizona
Fax: 509.752.6776
Ernie_Berriz@qwest.net
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