On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 5:30 PM, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> 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?

On the grub menu, edit the entry of the system you want to boot and on the kernel line, add "init=/bin/bash" without the quotes. Boot that modded boot instructions sequence. After kernel loads, you'll have a bash. Type: "mount -o rw,remount /"
Then type "passwd", put the new root pwd. Remount the partition read-only: "mount -o ro,remount /" and reboot. Done!

--
Ricardo Saffi Marques
Laboratório de Administração e Segurança de Sistemas (LAS/IC)
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)
Cell: +55 (19) 8128-0435
Skype: ricardo_saffi_marques
Website: http://www.rsaffi.com