[mdlug] su Password problem

[gib at juno.com]

ubuntu 6.06 allows you to boot into a recovery version off of the (is it grub?) menu. With that you get to the shell and can reset the root password with a known value:

passwd root

Then the passwd command will prompt you for the new password (I think twice). 

You can then reboot into normal mode and try again. 

---------- Original Message ----------
From: Michael <newmaniese at gmail.com>
To: "MDLUG's Main discussion list" <mdlug at mdlug.org>
Subject: Re: [mdlug] su Password problem
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 10:55:21 -0400

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Drew <drew4096 at gmail.com> wrote:

> At 02:17 PM 6/4/09, Michael wrote:
>
> >Are you sure you are entering the right password. `su root` expects the
> >password for root. If you have sudo permissions for yast and the other
> >commands, you are entering your own password. Try `sudo su root` and see
> if
> >that works for you.
>
> Just did, and it made me root *without* asking for a password. Of
> course, I had put
> myself in wheel and gave wheel NOPASSWD: ALL. So it's good for a workaround
> I guess.
>
> Still I'd like to find out what screwed up the normal operation of su
> before it screws
> up something else.
>

>From the root shell try resetting the password. I use Ubuntu, so things
might be different, but the administration from my user, when it asks for a
password it is looking for my user's password, not root's. My bet is, you
just forgot what root's password is, because it is used so infrequently (in
fact, Ubuntu doesn't give a known password to root after the default
install). Give this a try before you get too deep into thinking it is a
configuration problem.

I hope this helps,

Michael
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