Now I started my Thinkpad T61 which had not been used since some time, had Mageia 7.
The note i had on what root password it had was even elder
This is how resetting password worked out for me:
1) added "init=/bin/sh" to the kernel command line, got me to a root prompt
2) issued "passwd", and entered new password:
Problem: it responded “passwd: Authentication token manipulation error”
After a web search and some checking I found that / is not writeable.
(maybe because this system have / in LVM?)
2b) Fixed it with "mount -o remount,rw /", then passwd worked.
3) had to reboot using ctrl-alt-del, then all OK.
Uppgrading it is another adventure
Most mirrors do not carry mga7 repos. I found one:
# urpmi.removemedia -a
# urpmi.addmedia --distrib
http://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/p ... .1/x86_64/# urpmi --auto-up
That went well
rebooted
changed to mga8 repos
Upgrade finished while I was writing this on same system
And now going to reboot and change to mga9 repos, upgrade, test.
Yes total time and data would be less if i did a fresh install, but this is an exercise.
over and out.
Mandriva since 2006, Mageia 2011 at home & work. Thinkpad T40, T43, T400, T510, Dell M4400, M6300, Acer Aspire 7. Workstation using LVM, LUKS, VirtualBox, BOINC