root cannot login.

[juneym]

My friend accidentally modified the passwd file and because of this He cannot login as a root to modify the mistake. In my own experiment, i found out that he had accidentally pressed 1 or more letter at the end of the line where the root account is defined (as shown below)

root❌0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash (original)

root❌0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash zzz (the modified file)

Because of this any attempt login as a root either by the LOGIN prompt or by SU command does not work. Is there any solution in regaining access to the system? Or should he just re-install the whole system?

[finger]

this is a php-forum. anyway. try this:

• restart the system
• start to runlevel 1 (in lilo enter: linux 1)

now you should get a root-shell where you can change your pwd

regards

finger

[brandonschnell]

there might be a simpler way to handle it, but heres what i'd do.

reboot to the system cd (exit out of the install or choose linux repair mode) mount the hd with the / filesystem to /mnt or /tmp, cd to the /etc filesystem thats now mounted to something like /mnt/hda6/etc/, use /mnt/hda6/usr/bin/pico /mnt/hda6/etc/passwd to modify the file and save it, reboot normally without the cd and you're in business.

[brandonschnell]

problem isn't the password but the shell, single user mode may not work. but i haven't tried this so its not a bad idea

[Anon]

The problem was that he had just finished installing the system and has created 1 normal user as his normal account. Can he use that account to restart to init 1. I think that can only be invoke by a super-user? He is using SuSE Linux.

[Anon]

thanks for the tip

[Anon]

thanks for the tip