[clue-tech] recover root? Ubuntu 10.4 netbook remix

[Mike Bean]

It's working - I'm just trying to figure out what happened and how to clean
up the rest.   Honestly, I can't prove it, but I think root somehow got
renamed.   It's easy enough to just add users with admin privs, but I can't
recall any of my ubuntu boxes having a root login option choice, I've always
just sudo'ed.   Now that  think about it, is it even possible to rename
root?

Wierd.

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 9:58 PM, Jim Ockers <ockers at ockers.net> wrote:

>  Mike,
>
> You should never need to reinstall a Linux system unless the filesystem got
> corrupted somehow due to some sort of software glitch, which is really
> unlikely.  (If it was bad hardware, then replace the hardware of course.)
> The easiest way to get access to a Linux system to which you don't know any
> passwords is to either not run the startup sequence (init=/bin/bash) or else
> start up in single user mode only.  Either way you ought to be able to reset
> the root password.
>
> To make the system do nothing but mount the root filesystem, edit the
> kernel boot command line to include "init=/bin/bash" at the end of the
> command line.
>
> To make the system start in single user mode, edit the kernel boot command
> line to have an "s" at the end of it.
>
> There are a lot of different ways you can tackle this problem but these
> ought to get you on the right track or at least so you start to get the idea
> of how it all works and fits together.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Jim
>
> Mike Bean wrote:
>
>
> Hey cluebies,  I'm trying to help out a friend, I think she managed to blow
> out/change her root login somehow.  Not sure if it can be recovered.  I know
> I can always reinstall, but I'm wondering if there's a faster method?
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> clue-tech mailing listclue-tech at cluedenver.orghttp://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue-tech
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> clue-tech mailing list
> clue-tech at cluedenver.org
> http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue-tech
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://cluedenver.org/pipermail/clue-tech/attachments/20101015/46d0f3b8/attachment.html