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Vitellius
02-16-2006, 06:49 AM
Hi

I am attempting to delete the root password on my Fedora Core partition from Knoppix. Root is the only user account on the partition and after having been a few months since I have used it, I have forgotten the password.

To do this I need to edit the "shadow" file located in /mnt/sda3/etc/ However I noticed in Konqueror that this file has a lock on it. I used the "root shell" on the penguin icon on the taskbar and opened the "shadow" file using the "vi" command in the console. It displays the line that I need to edit but it won't let me write to the file! Then I noticed that Knoppix will not let me edit ANYTHING on the hardrive anywhere! Not even a damn text file on my windows partition! Even if I changed the persmission option using the right click option.

I thought one of the primary purposes of Knoppix was for recovery, what good is this if you can't write to the hard drive :roll: This reminds me of using a Mac, the level of child proofing is horrible :cry:

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

OErjan
02-16-2006, 05:24 PM
mount the / (root) partition of your Fedora install,
rightklick, choose action and change read/write mode
chroot to the mount point of fedora (let us say it is "/mount/point/of/fedora/"
sudo chroot /mount/point/of/fedora/
now just type "passwd root" and change password to whatever you want, much safer than trying to edit a shadow string.
as you most likely do not know the seed nor the key editing wil be risky, both the seed and key vary "randomly" with each install...