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If we forget our Linux root password, we can change it by changing grub's boot options.

But in this case, we also set a grub password and forgot both passwords. How can we recover both?

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1 Answer

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Boot from a LiveCD, then mount the / harddrive partition. You can now chroot into your harddrive and just run passwd as root there changing the root pw. That's also the way to change to grub password.

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Presently i'm using fedora, Is it possible to use ubuntu live CD for change password ? – Kumar Sep 20 '10 at 9:58
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Yeah, it doesn't really matter what distribution you use. – tante Sep 20 '10 at 10:11
@Kumar P: But you should use an 32bit CD for an 32bit system and 64bit CD for 64bit system – krissi Sep 20 '10 at 10:26
@krissi: Techincally you need 64bit kernel for 64bit system and any kernel for 32bit system. So SysResCD booted with 64-bit kernel (it has only 32-bit userland) can chroot both into 32 and 64 bit systems. – Maciej Piechotka Sep 20 '10 at 13:06
@Maciej Piechotka: Thats right. But I ran into some trouble in the past with mixing 64bit CD and 32bit. Don't ask my why this happend (maybe some tools read the wrong data from /sys or /proc). Maybe it has changed meanwhile, but I keep my pendrive with both, 32bit and 64bit Linux ;) – krissi Sep 20 '10 at 13:18

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