From the course: Linux: System Maintenance

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Gain root access

Gain root access - Linux Tutorial

From the course: Linux: System Maintenance

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Gain root access

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- [Instructor] If you're administering a system, it's likely that you know or that you have access to the root password, but in case you don't, there's a way to reset it to something that you do know. Obviously, this should be a last-ditch action, not something you do every month or just because the password is hard to remember. And to do it, you need physical access to a machine, because it involves changing a parameter in the bootloader and logging into single user mode. To begin, I'll restart my system. And at the bootloader screen, I'll press e to enter the boot entry. Here at the end of the linux16 line, and I'll move over there with Control + E to go to the end of the line. I'll add the argument rd.break, which stops the startup process before the system enters a multi-user mode. I'll press Control + X to continue booting with this modification, and here in this limited system mode, I'm automatically root, but I don't have network services or most other system services. So, it's…

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