hi
i have a RHEL 4 and have forgot root passwd
tried to boot in by singel user and then changing the passwd but it's not letting me do that ......throwing some weird error as .......manipulation
i also tried to make a new user from CLI but even though it's not letting me in from that user as well .......
i even tried 'rm shadow' that dosent help as welll.....!!

please advice....

techbravo

Hi,
If you still have the install CD then boot from it into rescue/repair mode, mount the disk which hosts /etc/passwd & /etc/shadow and erase the root password ...
What weird error did you get when booting in single user ? is it password protected ?

Not sure what rhel4 means, though.

I seem to recall that one way around this is to boot the server from the op console port in single-user mode, and then to reset the password. When starting in this mode, you should not get a password prompt.

It stands for redhat enterprise linux 4 joeyg, provided the loader (grub or lilo) is not password protected, you can boot into single and reset root pw, i wonder what weird error techbravo is having

IS the filesystem mounted RW? if not remount it with
mount -o remounnt,rw /

Check the permission of /etc/shadow and /etc/passwd

Do history and see what commands were run related passwd

tail /var/log/messages and see related messages. Post here if u dont understand.

Good luck!

the error is as follows
passwd:authencation token manipulation error
i tried creating another user but it's not alowing me switch user
can i know how to swith user so that can be tried.....

i think that should work .......!!

Without being crazy enough to test my hypothesis, this is only speculation, but if you have removed the shadow file, I wouldn't be too surprised if that's the reason you get this error.

Do you have a backup? Can you recreate it somehow?

The customary solution is to boot into single user (perhaps from a CD or USB stick) and edit the /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow file to have an empty password field for root. Then boot the regular system, log in as root, and set a new password.