paul wisehart wrote:
> Henrik Carlqvist wrote:
>
>> If I were you I would feel a lot more safer if I knew what could have
>> changed the root password for you.
>
>
> I assumed he just forgot it. With all the drive switching and what-not.
> --
> paul

Not so. The passwords are one of four. The same password that logged
me in to the morning session did not work for the afternoon session.

Regards,

Marv

Marv Soloff wrote:
> Not so. The passwords are one of four. The same password that logged
> me in to the morning session did not work for the afternoon session.

Hi Marv,
without details, that's hard to decipher.
i'm not getting on or case or anything, and i'm glad you got something
to work.
--
paul

paul wisehart wrote:
> Marv Soloff wrote:
>
>> Not so. The passwords are one of four. The same password that logged
>> me in to the morning session did not work for the afternoon session.
>
>
> Hi Marv,
> without details, that's hard to decipher.
> i'm not getting on or case or anything, and i'm glad you got something
> to work.
> --
> paul

We have had some really strange weather here in the Northeast. Could
have been power surges. After 20 years as a Systems Engineer nothing
surprises me anymore. As for working - the 10.2 Slack installs went
smoothly for all three systems and I have Slack 9.0 and 9.1 as backup
drives. I will be shifting over to DSL next week. If I run into problems
I'll yell for help again.

Regards,

Marv

Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com>:
> Marv Soloff <msoloff@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > paul wisehart wrote:
> >> Delete the hashed password entry for root. (Not the whole line, just
> >> the part thats represents the password.)
> >>
> >> Now when you reboot, root has a blank password.
> >>
> >> note: You should really only do that if you just forgot your password,
> >> not if you got cracked.
>
> > Does not work - used vi to delete hashes on both etc/passwd and
> > etc/shadow. Thanks anyway.
>
> Then check that root has a valid shell:
>
> $ cat /etc/passwd | grep root
> root:x:0:0::/root:/bin/bash

Useless use of cat. "grep root /etc/passwd"

fwiw.


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Marv Soloff wrote:
> Stock Slackware 10.2 install. Up about six weeks with rudimentary
> password and login as root. This morning's session went fine, but I
> must have picked up a bug or virus because I cannot log in again this
> afternoon. Any ideas on how go get into the system? Rebooting with the
> install disk and using "passwd" does not work. I really would not like
> to rebuild this disk, but if I have to - I have to.

(For those who care, seeing as how the problem has been solved.)

It has been my experience and practice to edit BOTH /etc/passwd AND /etc/shadow. First, I remove the encrypted password from shadow and then I remove any (password) characters from passwd. This way, I remove the encrypted password in shadow as well as telling the security system to use a blank password from passwd. This has always allowed me to reboot normally and log in as the account that I wanted to change and run passwd to reset password to what I want them to be.



Grant. . . .