Root Password Reset

Debian Squeeze change root password

Method 1

• Boot into grub, select single user but do not press enter.
• Press e to go into edit mode.
• Scroll down to the kernel line, it starts with "linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6……."
• Scroll to the end of that line and press space key once and type init=/bin/bash
• Press Ctrl X to boot

# Remount / as Read/Write 
mount -rw -o remount /

# Change password with
passwd

# type new password, confirm and hit enter and then reboot.

Method 2

• Boot from another installation of Debian. (One can use a LiveCD to get access to the "/" partition.)
• Then, mount the partition where you have Squeeze's "/", then changed directory to /mnt/etc
• Used vim / nano as an editor to edit the file shadow.
• Find the line starting with root:
• Delete everything between the first and second colons (:), and the line will now look like:

root::$6$fsdsdgdsg74.:14862:0:99999:7:::

• Reboot as root without a password.
• At the end use passwd to set a new root password.
• Reboot and login as root with the new root password.

References

• Debian Squeeze change root password
• Griffon's IT Library - Cache