[TriLUG] no root PW

Jeremy P jeremyp at pobox.com
Wed Apr 17 14:09:05 EDT 2002


On Wed, 17 Apr 2002, lfwelty wrote:

> Jeremy P wrote:
> > 
> > That won't work these days; the boot scripts now prompt for the root
> > password when starting in single-user mode.
> 
> I haven't seen this yet. Have you actually experienced it?
> What release/distro? Got any pointers to docs? refs?

I'm sorry, I wasn't quite correct for default RHL 7.x.  The boot scripts
do prompt for a password when a filesystem check fails, forcing the system
to go into single-user mode.  This is done by calling the "sulogin"
program.  But by default they don't prompt when you start in single-user
mode with "single" passed to the kernel (via LILO/grub).  If you have this
default setup, than that's certainly the easiest way to reset the root
password.

However, you can modify /etc/inittab to run sulogin when the "single"
parameter is specified.  (See the manpage for sulogin).  This would
probably be a good idea for public workstations.  You also can add a
password to LILO or grub (plus a BIOS password and physical lock are
necessary for public workstations).

--Jeremy

(FYI, see /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit for the script that runs "sulogin" to ask
for a password on filesystem check failure.)




More information about the TriLUG mailing list