Shadow password file

[Austin Godber]

Vaughn Treude wrote:
> Hello all:
> 
> I have a machine on which I have lost the root password.  (Doh!)  I was 
> looking for a workaround to reinstallation.  I was thinking I could boot it 
> with Knoppix and replace the shadow password file.  As a test, I looked at 
> the shadow password files on two different machines that happend to be the 
> same distro and have the same root password.  The encrypted entries for the 
> root password were different!  I can understand this would be a security 
> feature, but does anybody know of a wayI could get my workaround scheme to 
> work?
> 
> Thanks,
> Vaughn

Can't you just reboot into single user mode where you will be dumped straight 
into a root shell ... where you can just passwd?

If using LILO you can usually just type "linux single" at the lilo prompt ... 
you can do it with grub also ... just temporarily add single to the end of the 
line that mentions the kernel and boot from that (I don't remember the procedure 
exactly, but a little poking around and you can probably figure it out).

This, of course, may be disabled.

Austin