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

[Mike Bean]

Got this sorted out/working well.  Thanks all!

Mike

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 10:05 PM, Mike Bean <beandaemon at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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/b7aa61b8/attachment.html