Forgotten root password

[drew at drewtaylor.com (Drew Taylor)]

Derek Martin said on 4/10/2004 12:10 AM:

> On Fri, Apr 09, 2004 at 11:11:11PM -0400, Drew Taylor wrote:
> 
>>I'm resurrecting an old RH 7.3 box and I've forgotten the root password. 
>>:-( In addition, I seem to have tossed the old install discs I burned as 
>>well. I have a non-root login I remember so I can log into the system. 
>>But I can't upgrade apache/perl/etc. What are my options?
> 
> 
> The boot loader you have on that machine is probably LILO.  At the
> Linux prompt, boot to single user mode by typing this:
> 
>   linux s

Thanks. Mark also mentioned this tip.

> This will boot the system minimally and give you a root shell.  You
> can basically do what you want from here.  That is, assuming you did
> not set a password in the boot loader to prevent this kind of access
> from being easy...

Nah, I'm not that sophisticated a sysadmin. :-)

>>PS. At some point I'll probably upgrade to Fedora Core or Debian (via 
>>Knoppix I think). I also understand about vulnerabilities in such an old 
>>release and the box is 100% not accessible from the outside.
> 
> 
> Well, my advice is don't put off until tomorrow what you really ought
> to do today...  If you have this kind of situation, you really should
> just upgrade the box before you do anything else.  That'll solve your
> root access problem.

I'm downloading the Fedora ISO images right now. Thank goodness for 
Comcast's upgrade. The first disc maxed out at 345KB/sec, and the other 
two are simultaneous at 140KB/sec. :-) Thanks for the advice. Sometimes 
you just need a kick in the pants to get things done.

Now, to find a quiet hard disk to replace the very noisy (but 
functioning) 3x4GB Seagate SCSI disks. I added an IDE controller a while 
back for good measure too.

Drew
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