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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