Forgot Linux Root Password

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| By Webner

Recently I forgot root password of Open SuSE 10.2 Linux installed on my laptop. I searched over net to find steps below following which I was able to successfully reset (change) root password:

1. Boot the system and when you get Grub screen (Grub is boot manager which presents a blue screen before you in case of Open Suse Linux 10.2) you have to press ‘e’. This will take the prompt to ‘kernel’ line where you can give arguments to boot process.

2. Type init=/bin/bash there and press enter to proceed. This will take you to the command prompt much earlier than normal without mounting a lot of stuff.

3. Type

mount -o remount,rw /

on command prompt to mount filesystem. If that doesn’t work (it might not), just type “mount” to find out where “/” is mounted. Let’s say it is on /dev/sda2. You’d then type:

mount -o remount,rw /dev/sda2

4. If you can do above steps then type

passwd

and change root password to whatever you like.

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