password

[John Poelstra]

Mike McCarty said the following on 02/13/2007 12:05 PM Pacific Time:
> Robert Anderson wrote:
>> On 2/19/98, Robert Stevens <stevens8136 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>  I purchased a computer on ebay with Fedora core.  The Fedora  core 
>>> boots
>>> up, but asks for a user name and password and I can't go any 
>>> further.  The
>>> seller is not helpful.  Is there any way I can get past the user name 
>>> and
>>> password.  This is a gateway computer.  The computer is useless to me 
>>> as it
>>> is.
>>> Bob
> 
> Sorry to reply "through you" Robert.
> 
> One way to deal with this is to boot from a LiveCD like Knoppix
> and chroot then change the root password to what you want, and add
> a user for yourself. Then reboot, and log in as your new user.
> Then you can use "su -" to change to root, and give yourself
> sudo priviledge, and open up any files you want by chmod'ing
> them to allow your user access.
> 
> Mike

If there is no password on the bootloader you don't need a live CD.

Edit the grub entry at boot time by adding a "1" to the end of the line with begins with "kernel"

This will boot Fedora into single user mode.  Type "passwd" at the prompt and enter your new root password.

John