Hi Marko,

Possibly my explanation was not clear enough. What I meant was that I know how to do it using single user mode by editing grub entry. But on this specific machine, I cannot use the approach because I am not getting grub menu.

However coming to problem itself, let me say that it is partly resolved. I have managed to recover the password using installation DVD in rescue mode.

What is remaining is that when the machine is booting it stops for a while then goes straight  to login dialogue box without grub menu and services startup list (in x-windows)

Hosea


From: Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko@gmail.com>
To: fedora-list@redhat.com
Cc: Hosea Phiri <phiri_hosea@yahoo.com>
Sent: Tue, January 5, 2010 12:32:05 PM
Subject: Re: Recover Root Password on FC 11 and Missing GRUB Screen

On Tuesday 05 January 2010 08:15:12 Hosea Phiri wrote:
> I have a client who lost root password for his machine running FC 11. I
>  made an attempt to recover password by booting in single mode. I am
>  familiar with editing the GRUB boot menu and appending "linux single" to
>  make the server boot in sigle mode.
>
> My surprise, the machines boots differently. I noticed one major thing that
>  looked different from other versions of Fedora I have used before. It does
>  not bring up the Grub menu. It does not even show the services startup. It
>  goes straight into login prompt bypassing all other stages which I guess
>  run from background.

As far as I see from your description, this is proper behavior. In single user
mode the services do not start and you are dropped into a root shell
immediately. Nothing wrong with that. And AFAIK, this has been like that for
some time now.

Just do a "passwd" to set up the new root password, and reboot the machine in
regular multiuser mode.

Or are there some problems with this?

HTH, :-)
Marko