From owner-freebsd-questions  Fri May 30 10:34:36 1997
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Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 10:34:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: "E. Lakin" <pharaoh@u.washington.edu>
To: Andy Pendry <andy.p@cableinet.co.uk>
cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Never thought I could be so stupid!
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On Fri, 30 May 1997, Andy Pendry wrote:
> I am embarrassed!
> 
> I was changing user passwd's in root, and I enterted passwd without a
> user name (I was distracted). When I rebooted, I couldn't get into root
> because I had unwittingly changed the root passwd.
> 
> I have tried using a boot floppy. The change root passwd option is
> avaialable in the menu, but when I select it, it just redisplays the
> menu.

If you reboot the machine into single-user mode (-s at the boot prompt),
you'll have root access. The passwd file can then be edited.