Rafa Grimán wrote: > On Thursday 03 February 2011 14:59 Giles Coochey wrote >> On 03/02/2011 14:40, Rafa Griman wrote: >> > On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 3:44 PM, James Bensley<jwbensley at gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> So on a virtual server the root password was no longer working (as in >> >> I couldn't ssh in anymore). Only I and one other know it and neither >> >> of us have changed it. No other account had the correct privileges to >> >> correct this so I'm wondering, if I had mounted that vdi as a >> >> secondary device on another VM, browsed the file system and delete >> >> /etc/shadow would this have wiped all users passwords meaning I could >> >> regain access again? >> >> <snip> >> That would do it... There is single-user-mode (runlevel 1), just add the >> word single to the kernel parameters line before bootup > > Yes, but S|Single|1 asks for root password to login ... And he doesn't > have the root password ;) Boot from a rescue CD/DVD, then chroot and use passwd. mark