Newbie needs help!

lroy1978 · Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 9:39 pm Post subject: Newbie needs help!

Hi All,
Ive just installed gentoo and I have gotten to the point where I have rebooted my system. The problem
is that I dont have the root password and I hadn't got around to installing any users yet! Help!

Is there any easy way to get around this problem?

Many thanks
Lee

ecosta · Guru Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 477 Location: Brussels,BE

If hiting enter and the password prompt doesn't do it you can,
Boot of the Live CD
mount your file systems to "/mnt/gentoo"
chroot into /mnt/gentoo
and type : passwd

Voila

Ed.
_________________
Linux user #201331
A8N-SLI Delux / AMD64 X2 3800+ / 1024 MB RAM / 5 x 250 GB SATA RAID 1/5 / ATI Radeon X700 256MB.

pepperbob · n00b Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 11

The chrooting should work.

This is another way to do it:

boot the install cd
mount your root partition (the one on your harddisk)
edit your /etc/shadow file (on you mounted root partition)
find a line like:
root:dsfDSDF!s:12581:0:99999:7:::

and remove everything between the first two colons, it should look like:
root::12581:0:99999:7:::
afterwards.

unmount and reboot. Login with root and no password.

I suggest chrooting instead of editing the shadow file...

lroy1978 · Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 10:00 pm Post subject:

Thank you very much! Problem sorted!