On Tue, 23 Jun 2020, Konstantin Olchanski wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 10:49:48AM +0200, Elio Fabri wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> I need help (at lest a link) as to how to recover my root password.
>> I'm using SL6.2. The password I remember by heart is no longer
>> accepted, neither for the su command nor for sudo.
>> Thx
>
> While you cannot "recover" the root password, if you have physical access
> to the machine, you can bypass it, login as root and reset the password:
> remove the boot disk from problem machine, attach it to a 2nd computer,
> mount the root partition, go to root/.ssh and install your ssh key. unmount,
> reassemble problem computer, boot, ssh into root, done. While the boot disk
> is mounted on the 2nd computer, in addition to installing the ssh key,
> you can also reset the password (edit /etc/shadow) or setup "sudo" for
> password-less "sudo root" (recent Ubuntu are setup this way, you never actually
> use the root password to login into root).

If you remember the BIOS password, or never set one,
you can boot from an install or rescue disk/memory stick,
and do that "second computer" stuff without moving the
disk to another machine.


-- 
Andrew C. Aitchison					Kendal, UK
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