From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jun 7 14:25:49 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from wondermutt.net (host75-157.student.udel.edu [128.175.75.157]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2C2CA37B690 for ; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 14:25:46 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from papalia@udel.edu) Received: from morgaine.udel.edu (morgaine.wondermutt.net [192.168.1.2]) by wondermutt.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA20404; Wed, 7 Jun 2000 17:27:50 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from papalia@udel.edu) Message-Id: <4.3.1.2.20000607172036.00ae0310@mail.udel.edu> X-Sender: papalia@mail.udel.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 17:24:27 -0400 To: "Raymundo M. Vega" , Chris Picton From: John Subject: Re: Hacking the root password Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <393E8FAB.CE961DF7@home.com> References: <393E5F09.263BF8B3@usko.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > I have just taken over the administration of some unix systems. There > > is a machine, running as a secondary name server on FreeBSD for which no > > record of the root password has been stored, so I can't log in to the > > box. If it was a linux machine, I would boot off a floppy with > > init=/bin/bash and manually change the root password. However, I have > > never used FreeBSD before. How would I go about getting/changing the > > root password for this machine. > >you can reboot in single user mode and do the same thing. Looking in from the outside on this question, I'm a bit confused... more than one person has suggested to Chris to reboot the machine into single user mode. Typically wouldn't a new user to a system (unless otherwise set up by the previous admin) need root access to issue "shutdown" or "reboot" commands? So, short of hitting the reset button or pulling the plug (and living with the consequential damages) is there some other way to drop to single user mode that I'm missing? Thanks, John To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message