Comments on: Howto reset root password for a linux machine

By: alim

alim — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:18:22 +0000

there you go – its easy

By: digitalpbk

digitalpbk — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:57:20 +0000

I needed a little more steps to reset the password, some of you who may get stuck may need this. Reset linux box password.

By: chamal

chamal — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:07:05 +0000

thx man, very nice.

By: Hairman

Hairman — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:29:35 +0000

That works great.

To note on step 7 for Fedora Core 9, enter passwd then enter. Will get a message you are changing the root password, afterward enter the new password.

Thanks for posting this.

By: init7

init7 — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:49:59 +0000

@nitinr0cks
No, it’s probably not corrupted. Some distro require root password to enter runlevel 1, openSUSE for example.

@rnik
Try to change the ’single’ parameter with ‘init=/bin/bash’.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:42:46 +0000

If you’ve set a root password and forgotten it, you could always boot into a live cd, chroot into your on-disk install and change the password from there… not as simple mind you but should get around the problem

By: Akhil Ravidas

Akhil Ravidas — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:20:06 +0000

I have tried it on several Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04.. It does not work on my comp in which the user set the root password..( ie. Not the default one )..

By: nitinr0cks

nitinr0cks — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:13:37 +0000

“Enter root password for maintenance: “.

The file system might be corrupted. You may need to perform a fsck (file system check )

By: rnik

rnik — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:18:10 +0000

In my machine, it doesn’t go to the # prompt. Instead it asks for root password. I get a message like this “Enter root password for maintenance: “.
Any clues why this is happening and what can I do about it?
Since I was not the only one using my machine, is it possible that someone changed the fstab?

By: nitinr0cks

nitinr0cks — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:03:13 +0000

Yes, this should work on all.