Re: [webmin-l] Regarding "pre encrypted" passwords

[Craig W. <cra...@az...>]

On Thu, 2006-05-25 at 12:00 -0500, Jamie Cameron wrote:
> On 25/May/2006 04:36 Frank wrote .. 
> > Hi all,
> >  
> > This must be the single most ridiculous situation I found myself in
> > lately, and maybe someone can help me on this one.
> >  
> > By mistake, I changed the root password using plain text in the "pre
> > encrypted" password field, thus locking myself out.  My system is
> > very secure now, to say the least...
> >  
> > I do not wish to retreive the password (it's probably in some form
> > of hash), but is there a way to make use of my human readable
> > password to correspond to the way it is now stored on the system?
> > I've noticed that the pre encrypted field had been hashed upon
> > saving the root user profile.
> >  
> > Any help on that would be most welcome, to say the least.
> >  
> > Frank  
> I think I see what you are looking for, but unfortunately it is not
> possible. To work out which plain-text password matches a particular
> hash would require a really slow brute-force check of all possible
> passwords .. of which there are billions!
> 
> If your root password is lost, the only solution is to boot the
> machine from a CD, mount the / filesystem manually, and
> edit /etc/shadow to blank out the password.
----
on linux systems, you should be able to boot to runlevel 1 (add 'linux
1' to grub kernel line) which is single user no password necessary,
change the root password via command 'passwd' and then reboot.

Craig