[SOLVED] Reset Root Password

[Weatherlawyer]

I wish I had learned Linux when I was younger.
I will passionately hate hate Tony Blair and Bill Gates forever.

I had a stroke a few years ago and remembering passwords was one of the biggest problems I had from it. No use writing them down either as I would just f rget where I put them.

[isadora]

In my opinion a totally worthless addition to the topic, which in itself is already years old.

[Weatherlawyer]

In my opinion a totally worthless addition to the topic, which in itself is already years old.

How do you value worth?

[doktor5000]

It does not contribute anything meaningful to the topic.

[flink]

FWIW, a repair-install isn't required. At the bootloader, simply add init=/bin/sh to the kernel command line after pressing F3 and selecting Default, and at the prompt change the root password via passwd command.

What must be done if I boot with Mageia-8 EFI? I see no option for pressing F3

[sturmvogel]

On UEFI systems you need to mark the relevant line in grub you want to edit, and press "e". Thats quite standard for all distributions with UEFI grub2.
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_set_up_kernel_options#With_Grub_2_bootloader_2

[morgano]

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.