Lost root Password? Boot without it!
Some time ago I placed a post (see Starten von Linux ohne Passwort) on how to boot without knowing any password of the machine. The post describes how to do it with Lilo. In the mean time I found out that some derivates behave quite different and that Grub more and more becomes standard boot manager (poor Lilo).
I tried it with some derivates and it worked like a charm. Please note that there could be differences between the server and possible available community versions.
For all derivates that operates with Grub counts: As soon you see Grub stop boot process and change the boot parameters according to the following small table:
Derivate | Option ============================================= SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 | init=/bin/sh Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 4.5 | single Debian GNU/Linux 3 | init=/bin/sh Debian GNU/Linux 4 | init=/bin/sh
If you hold on to that you should be able to boot directly into a shell. Remount the / partition and change any password you like. There are some tools which try to prevent that from happening but as far as I’ve experienced it nobody deploys them (except for Red Hat but you’re still able to access the shell via the “single” switch)
Let met know if you make other experiences or discover other switches for different derivates.