Am Dienstag, 25. März 2008 schrieb ext Liviu Andronic: > On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 6:41 AM, Uwe Thiem wrote: > > > I've revived an old Gentoo laptop, but I've forgotten the root > > > > > > password. I remember the password to my user account and I can log > > > in there fine. Can I recover the root password? > > > > If you could passwords were useless. ;-) > > > > But you can boot from a LiveCD, mount your harddrive, chroot and then > > give root another password. > > But then, conventional passwords are as useless. One needs no more > than physical access to the computer, a LiveCD and a couple minutes in > order to become the super user of your system. Basically, the password > seems useful only to know whether anyone has changed it behind your > back. That's only true if you didn't do anything else to protect the system. All the above is useless if the / filesystem is encrypted. > I am starting to wonder why am I so attached to my root password being > strong.. :) Because it protects your system from abuse. Bye... Dirk -- Dirk Heinrichs | Tel: +49 (0)162 234 3408 Configuration Manager | Fax: +49 (0)211 47068 111 Capgemini Deutschland | Mail: dirk.heinrichs@capgemini.com Wanheimerstraße 68 | Web: http://www.capgemini.com D-40468 Düsseldorf | ICQ#: 110037733 GPG Public Key C2E467BB | Keyserver: www.keyserver.net