Dee’s Quick Tip of the Week

This is going to be a very short issue this week. I apologize for being late on top of short on content; I’ve been on the road teaching a course and it’s been far more hectic than I had expected!

Rather than having articles, I’m offering up Dee’s Quick Tip of the
Week:

Forget your root password and don’t know how to fix this in GRUB? When
you reach the GRUB boot loader, select the kernel you want to boot into as usual. Then, press “e” to edit the GRUB configuration for this entry, use the arrows to move to the line starting with “kernel”, and press “e” to edit this particular line. At the end, where you see “LABEL=/”, change this to “LABEL=/ 1″.

Once you’ve done this, press Enter to temporarily save the changes just for this boot, and then press “b” to boot the machine. You’ll boot to a root prompt, where you can change the root password and then reboot.

You should be noticing something else about now. Look how easy it is to change someone’s root password! This can only be done by people
physically at the machine, but it illustrates why some people set
passwords for GRUB, or even for the BIOS! If you’re really worried,
place the machine within a locked cage or something so no one can mess
with the box.

Digitally Yours, 
Dee-Ann LeBlanc