RHEL: Forgotten ’root’ password / using single-user to gain access -

RHEL: Forgotten 'root' password / using single-user to gain access

# Tested on RHEL 6 & 7

# RHEL 6 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Booting into single user mode is the easiest way to gain access to a RHEL server (only
# feasible if you have access to the physical console).

# To enter single-user mode, reboot your computer. If you use the default boot loader, GRUB,
# you can enter single user mode by performing the following:

# Method A:

# 1.- At the boot loader menu, use the arrow keys to highlight the installation you want
#     to edit and type 'a' to enter into append mode.

# 2.- You are presented with a prompt that looks similar to the following:

grub append> ro root=LABEL=/

# 3.- Press the Spacebar once to add a blank space, then add the word 'single' to tell
#     GRUB to boot into single-user Linux mode. The result should look like the following:

ro root=LABEL=/ single

# 4.- Press [Enter] and GRUB will boot single-user Linux mode. After it finishes loading,
#     you will be presented with a shell prompt.

# 5.- You are now in single user mode, and be auto logged in as root. You can now change
#     the root password by typing:

passwd root

# *** Note: For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 there is a bug that will prevent you from
# changing your root password in single user mode. This is a result of SELinux. For this
# situation you would want to temporarily disable SELinux:

setenforce 0

# Now you should be allowed to change your root password.

# Method B:
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# 1.- At the beginning of the boot process you should see the grub menu pop up with a
#    countdown and some kernel options (or perhaps just one option). It should be counting
#    down at this point and says: "Press any key to enter the menu". In this case you would
#    hit any key.

# 2.- At the bottom of the screen there is an explanation of the few options that are
#     available to use on this page. One of these options is 'e' for edit. Hit 'e' to edit
#     the boot kernel options.

# 3.- You would now edit the main kernel options, adding 'single' at the end.

# 4.- Once you have completed that hit enter, then 'b' for boot.

# 5.- You are now in single user mode, and be auto logged in as root. You can now change
#     the root password by typing:

passwd root

# *** Note: For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 there is a bug that will prevent you from
# changing your root password in single user mode. This is a result of SELinux. For this
# situation you would want to temporarily disable SELinux:

setenforce 0

# Now you should be allowed to change your root password.

# Method C:
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# If, for whatever reason (hardened server,... ), methods A and B don't work, we can proceed
# as shown here below.

# Use either method A or B to edit kernel options and append

init=/bin/sh

# This process passes the init=/bin/sh option to the kernel and tells it to run /bin/sh
# as init instead of the normal /sbin/init. By doing this, the normal init process is
# bypassed.

# To reset root password:

# Mount the /proc filesystem

mount /proc

# Remount the root filesystem in read/write mode

mount -n -o remount,rw /

# Mount the /usr partition (if it is a separate partition)

mount /usr

# Reset root password

/usr/bin/passwd

# and, finally, power cycle the system manually (none of the reboot commands is meant to

# work at this point)

# RHEL 7 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Reboot server. At the boot loader menu, user the arrow keys to highlight the installation
# you want to edit and press "e" to modify the parameters to boot the kernel

# Scroll down until you find the kernel line. It looks like this one, beginning with
# "linux16":

linux16 /vmlinuz-0-rescue-ccddb0f617bc493baa4e9f7d7b8e4612 root=/dev/mapper/rootvg-lv_root \
   ro crashkernel=256M rd.lvm.lv=rootvg/lv_root \
   rd.lvm.lv=rootvg/lv_swap rd.lvm.lv=rootvg/lv_usr net.ifnames=0 rhgb quiet

# You need to change "ro" to "rw" and start into a bash shell. Your new line should look
# like this one:

linux16 /vmlinuz-0-rescue-ccddb0f617bc493baa4e9f7d7b8e4612 root=/dev/mapper/rootvg-lv_root \
   rw init=/sysroot/bin/bash crashkernel=256M rd.lvm.lv=rootvg/lv_root \
   rd.lvm.lv=rootvg/lv_swap rd.lvm.lv=rootvg/lv_usr net.ifnames=0 rhgb quiet

# Then, you're ready to boot the server by simply pressing "Crtl + x"

# Once the server is up you should be able to change change root's password by running
# following commands:

chroot /sysroot

passwd root

# Reboot your server to start it up in multi-user mode.