Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 13:16:34 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Desmond Lee <desmond.lee@shaw.ca> Cc: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: root unkown? Message-ID: <20020805034634.GL83171@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <CMEMLGKEKMLLFOICILNMGEFOCBAA.desmond.lee@shaw.ca> References: <CMEMLGKEKMLLFOICILNMGEFOCBAA.desmond.lee@shaw.ca>
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[removing -newbies; they're not a technical list]
On Sunday, 4 August 2002 at 20:42:36 -0700, Desmond Lee wrote:
> Hi there
>
> I can't log into my machine because i hosed the /etc/group and the
> /etc/master.passwd files while doing an upgrade.
>
> Anywho, i'm looking at the freebsd faq , 10.14. I have forgotten the root
> password! What do I do?, to try and change the root password. But when i do
> 'passwd root' i get a message like 'passwd: Unkown user root".
Right, that's what you do when you've lost the password. If you've
lost the user, you'll have to restore it. You should be able to do it
like this:
1. Boot into single user mode.
2. Mount the live file system CD-ROM.
3. Copy the files /etc/group and /etc/master.passwd to their correct
place.
4. Run:
# pwd_mkdb /etc/master.passwd
This will give you a root user with no password. You should obviously
fix that as soon as possible. If you don't have the live file system,
they're on the installation ISO as well, but that's more work.
Greg
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