Hi,
I remember back in the days, there was a neat trick to recover a lost root password, or more exactly, redefine a new password for root.
1. In the bootloader, boot the system with the 'init=/bin/bash' kernel argument.
2. Remount the root partition in read-write mode:
# mount -o remount,rw /
3. Set the password for root:
# passwd
4. Remount the root partition in read-only mode:
# mount -o remount,ro /
5. Switch off the computer.
I tried this out of curiosity on a CentOS 7 sandbox machine, and this doesn't seem to work anymore. I can boot to a 'bash' console and set the password OK. But this password doesn't seem to work on the subsequent normal boot.
Anybody knows why this is so?
Cheers,
Niki