[mdlug] su Password problem

[Aaron Kulkis]

Drew wrote:
>      The 'su root' command, and the 'Terminal Program - Super User 
> Mode' application in the Terminals submenu,
> have spontaniously stopped accepting my root password. Yast still 
> accepts it, as does Administrator Mode in
> Personal Preferences; and I can also log in as root from the Login 
> screen. (I get a background wallpaper of
> bombs and exclamation points.) But su returns "Wrong password".
> 
>      Why the different behavior for su? And why *did* su and the 
> Super User Terminal app previously accept
> my password?

My guess is that su returned "wrong password" because it
was the wrong password, as compared to the hash of the
root password stored in /etc/shadow, which, by definition,
represents the right password.

Now, if you can log into root using this password, then
su is screwed up.  But my guess is that you can't login
to root using the password you tried, either.

Get a rescue disk, mount the root partition, edit
/mnt/etc/shadow, remove the password hash (replace
:34398b9839ghbavhabihbrwhatever: with ::), save the
file, boot off the main system, login to root (the
password should be simply the return key), and then
IMMEDIATELY run the command   passwd

The current password will be the return key,
Type your desired new password twice.

Problem solved.


> 
>      This is Suse 11.0, running KDE 3.5, Kernel 2.6.25.5-1.1-pae.
> 
> ----
> 
>    - Drew.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> mdlug mailing list
> mdlug at mdlug.org
> http://mdlug.org/mailman/listinfo/mdlug