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Editing Red Hat Password Files

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Sleeping Dog:
Can one of you Unix/Linux Gurus help me with this one?
Question:  Using a utility such as LREAD running under DRDOS, is it possible to manually edit the /etc/passwd and-or the /etc/shadow files so that root access is set back to the original post installation default (as if `root' had not set any passwords yet)?  I was given a box with Red Hat 6.0 already on it, but the benefactor could not remember the root password or even the login name.  I have found the login name(s) and encripted passwords in passwd and shadow respectively, but am hesitant to do any manual editing of these files without `professional' advice.

Your kind advice and assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Sleeping Dog

badkarma:
the password is encrypted ... forget about it and re-install  

Master of Reality:
couldnt he get a decrypter??

badkarma:
no .... he could brute force crack it ... but that can take a while (depending on the password)

edit:

in theory he could decrypt it, however (to the best of my knowledge) the root password is encrypted with the password itself being the key (so the key to decrypt the password doesn't have to be stored somewhere) which kind of defeats the point in this purpose  

in conclusion:

just re-install  

[ May 27, 2002: Message edited by: BadKarma ]

Master of Reality:
[sarcasm] this is just many of the reasons why windows is so much better, i mean in windows when you forget your password you can just click "cancel" and change it in the control panel. and in win NT+ you can just use a password editing disk that is really just a small linux on a disk.... that way i never have to re-install, except of course once a week to clear all the extra spyware registry files and such.[/sarcasm]

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