Root Password

[cynicaljim]

Greetings All
Seems I have messed things up a bit. I have just downloaded & installed Suse 10, & during the initall installation I had an error that wouldn't allow the system to boot. So I did a reinstallation (upgrade) & now I cannot log into the system.
It seems to think that there is a root password, however, i never got to the section asking to establis a root password. Is there a default, workaround, or am I just hosed & gotta start over?
Thanks in advance (from a goof)
Jim
cynicaljim@ev1.net

[irlandes]

It is late here, my pumpkin waits so to speak. But, there is usually a way on many distros to change lilo or grub and edit it to come up in a different runlevel, which requires no password, and will even let you change the password, or in your case create one. Seems like that is runlevel one or two, but not sure now.

So, unless you are in a big hurry wait for someone who has the time to spell it out. Frankly, I have seen many pages on this, if you have any luck with google. In fact, google is the main source of support for experienced geeks, you can even enter entire error messages in quotes and usually get the solution on the spot.

Of course, if you distro has blocked that way in, then you would have to reinstall.

[DrChuck]

I'm not sure about Suse, but there must be a rescue mode on your install dvd or cd. On fedora for example, I would boot off the first cd and type "rescue" at the boot prompt. Then, chroot to your root partition (hopefully you know what that is), and change the root password with the "passwd" command. If the installation was damaged, you may be screwed, but this is worth a try.

drChuck

[techwise]

cynicaljim, lots of people love SuSE. I suspect that you may be a new user and in the hopes of keeping you interested in Linux, if you have continued issues getting SuSE working, switch to another disrtribution. Not to say SuSE is bad but most of my experiences with it sound similar to what you are saying.

I vouch for Ubuntu and Debian.

Good luck.

Mike

[hard candy]

If possible, it is much simpler to append "single" to the kernel options in your bootloader. The system will start up in a minimal runlevel, dropping you off at a shell as root without prompting for a password. The passwd command can then be used to change the forgotten password as below.
Gentoo Wikki (http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Reset_a_Lost_Root_Password)

[rocketpcguy]

however, if you put the grub password the same as the root, it wont work, you have to use a boot disk. and if you made your bios password the same as the root, then you have to rip your computer

[Pafnoutios]

Did you try just hitting enter? Maybe the root password was left blank.
Otherwise, one of the above-mentioned rescue methods should work. Or, if you have a live CD and feel comfortable editting your /etc/shadow file, you could boot up the live CD, mount your root partition, and delete the encoded passwd from root's entry (should be top line, user #0), leaving the semi-colons there "::".

[Sepero]

Start the computer with a LiveCD and LOGIN AS ROOT USER. (For example, Knoppix LiveCD)

Mount the original Suse root partition. (From the desktop, or xterm: "mkdir /mnt/hda1; mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1")

Open an XTerminal and "change root" to Suse's partition. ("chroot /mnt/hda1 /bin/bash")

After that loads up, there may be errors scrolling across the screen. (eg. "Device /dev/null not found")

Just press ctrl-c to stop the errors. You should now have a slightly different prompt. (The Suse prompt.)

Create a new password for Suse's root. ("passwd")

Log out, reboot. (blah!)

[cynicaljim]

Thanks for all the imput, tried several variations, to no avail. I finally just reran install, started Yast, changed the root password, set up another account, & now we are cooking with gas.
Once again thanks for all your input, the linux community rocks!
Jim