SuSE root breakin

[Bill Campbell]

On Mon, May 26, 2008, Jay Nugent wrote:
>Greetings,
>   It has been years since I ever needed to break into a box to clear or
>reset the root passwork, and boy have things changed!  Used to be as
>simple as 'linux 1' at the LILO prompt.  Not anymore....
>
>   I have a server running SuSE 10.3 that I need to correct some settings
>on its Postfix configuration, and need root to do it.  The customer gave
>me the box to work on, but didn't give me the root PW.  I understand that
>I can boot into "rescue" from the install DVD (done that), then create a
>mount point (done that), and edit /etc/fstab (done that -- albeit not
>correctly apparently).
>
>   Can't seem to get the hard drive mounted after trying all sorts of
>permutations of fstab.  I don't know the exact partitioning of the hard
>drive but *seem* to recall it was basically three partitions, /, /home,
>and swap, and that it is a SATA drive.  But I can't recall whether it had
>LVM turned on or not, and I have NO idea how to deal with LVM *if* it was
>turned on.

It's been a while since I had to do this, but as a last resort
you might try:

enter init=/bin/sh at the Grub boot prompt.  This should take you
into a very bare shell environment.

# Remount the root partion read/write
mount -n -oremount,rw /
passwd root
# remount read-only
mount -n -oremount,ro /

Press the reset key.

Bill
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