Regain root control of Zenwalk system...

Alex Hewitt hewitt_tech at comcast.net
Wed Sep 24 13:18:36 EDT 2008


On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 13:09 -0400, Tom Buskey wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 12:34 PM, Alex Hewitt
> <hewitt_tech at comcast.net> wrote:
>         I have a laptop that was setup for a family member using a
>         Zenwalk
>         install. The laptop doesn't have a functional CD reader and I
>         don't have
>         the root password. I am able to easily pull the hard drive and
>         mount it
>         as a USB external drive to my Ubuntu system. I can see the
>         passwd and
>         shadow files and the lilo.conf file. Is there an easy way to
>         edit the
>         shadow password file to set a good password for root? Or might
>         it be
>         easier to modify the lilo.conf file to get into single user
>         mode and set
>         a new password from there?
>         
>         The current root password line in the shadow password file is:
>         
>         root:$1$yDo/7BS7$y8McHMKPj3hTRnSl.HTrO/:13427:0:::::
>         
>         Can I just remove the string "$1$yDo/7BS7
>         $y8McHMKPj3hTRnSl.HTrO/" to
>         edit out the password or do I need to replace it with
>         something else?
>         
>         -Alex
> 
> vi shadow
> :s/:1$yDo/7BS7$y8McHMKPj3hTRnSl.HTrO\/"/::/
> :wq
> 
> 
> root now has no password....
> 

Thanks to both responders. Stripping out the characters between the
first and second colons did the trick. I now have full control of the
system.

-Alex




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