Another forgotten password

[bobhjon]

Some time ago, I loaded and played around with Fedora Core2 and must have entered a user name and password. Now, I want to take a better look at Core 4, but it expects me to remember the name and password that I used months ago. Although Core 4 overwrote my Core 2, it must have left the name and pwd someplace. Does anyone know how to either locate a lost password or obliterate it so I can start anew?

[Bloodbat]

Well, the easiest way is to probably reformat the whole thing and install FC 4 over...after all, you don't seem to use it much, do you?

Bloodbat

[Spoon!]

Can you log in as root? As root you can do "passwd <user>" to change their password.

[gavinw6662]

when your system is booting, and you are at the grub screen

Highlight your kernel
type 'e'
then choose the second of the 3 lines
type 'e'
at the end of the line type 'single'
hit enter
then while that line is selected type 'b'

This will boot you into single user mode which make your root. When you finally get a prompt type

passwd

enter whatever you want the new root password to be.

Then log into your system with root and add/remove any user accounts you see fit.

[bobhjon]

Gavin ...
Workrd like a charm!! Many thanks!!
How does one ever learn all this esoteric stuff?? Now if I could only figure out how to configure GRUB to boot to choices instaed of to any key for menu with Other being the default, I'd be all set. I try to edit it on the fly and get a list of 20 commands none of which make any sense and there ain't no HELP!!
bobhjon

[dishawjp]

Now if I could only figure out how to configure GRUB to boot to choices instaed of to any key for menu with Other being the default, I'd be all set

What you have to do is edit the file /boot/grub/menu.lst
This can only be done as root and you should be very careful because hosing this file badly can cause a boot failure. For good measure, you should probably copy it before making any changes so that if something goes wrong you can recover it. Something like "cp -p menu.lst menu.list.first"

Then edit the file with your favorite Linux editor. Near the top should be a line that says default=0. This means that the first choice on the list will be the default. Change it to default=1 to have the second option be the default, or default=2 for the third and etc.

Then change the actual lines of the file, NOT the commented ones beginning and ending with ###. Change "other" or any other entry to whatever you want. Save and when you reboot, you should have a modified menu.

HTH,

Jim Dishaw

[gavinw6662]

Originally Posted by bobhjon

How does one ever learn all this esoteric stuff??
bobhjon

Well - learned from reading the posts on here. As well as running into many problems myself!