Forgotten Password

Question: Help! I forgot my root password. How do I log in now?

You can log in using single-user mode and create a new root password.

To enter single-user mode, reboot your computer. If you use the default bootloader, GRUB, you can enter single-user mode by following these steps:

1. At the bootloader menu, type e to enter editing mode.

2. You will be presented with a boot entry listing. Look for the line that looks similar to the following:

   kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-0.4 ro root=/dev/hda2

Press the arrow key until this line is highlighted and press e.

1. You can now add the word single one space after the end of the text to tell GRUB to boot into single-user Linux mode. Press Enter to make the editing change take effect.

2. You will be brought back to the edit mode screen. From here, press b and GRUB will boot single-user Linux mode. After it finishes loading, you will be presented with a shell prompt similar to the following:

   sh-2.05#

3. You can now change the root password by typing

   bash# passwd root

You will be asked to re-type the password for verification. After you are finished, the password will be changed. You can then reboot by typing reboot at the prompt; then you can log in to root as you normally would.