How to recover root password on 68k linux?

[madcow]

I bought an LC from a member in this forum. He forgot the root password to the debian installation. How do I recover the root password? I'm using Penguin. I'm unfamiliar with linux 68k and their bootleader.

 

[II2II]

You can't recover it, but you may be able to change it. Now I can't give specific advice, because I'm not familiar with Debian on the 68k. But you should be able to tell the bootloader which runlevel you want to startup the system in. Try runlevel 1, single user mode. Hopefully you'll get access to the root account without being asked for a password (common on older versions of Linux, but it's less common today). Then use passwd to change the root password.

The other option is to snag the passwd file from the Linux partition, remove the password field from root (with BBEdit, for example, since it handles Unix line-endings), then replace the old passwd file with the edited one.

I wish that I could be more specific, but I've only ever used NetBSD on 68k Macs.

 

[porter]

I bought an LC from a member in this forum. He forgot the root password to the debian installation. How do I recover the root password? I'm using Penguin. I'm unfamiliar with linux 68k and their bootleader.

I would never ever recommend using a machine as configured by some previous owner. Always rebuild the machine from scratch. You have no idea what is lurking in the machine.

 

[QuadSix50]

I second what porter said. You could be exposing yourself to some trouble, so best to err on the side of caution and reformat the Mac.