Changing Root Passwords without a Live CD

[Mike Oliver]

Quoting Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>:

> On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 01:22:55PM -0500, Scott Sullivan wrote:
>> Re: default root password on Fedora 12
>>
>> This Process work on all linux systems, and only requires physical
>> access to the machine.
>>
>> 1. While the machine is booting hit any key to stop grub from booting
>> automatically.
>>     (On Fedore 11 and 12 this is a very narrow window between the bios
>> and the pretty boot.)
>>
>> 2. type the character 'a' to append to the boot line and add the word
>> 'single' to the boot line.
>>     (This is a temporary addition and will only last for this boot.)
> On many systems single user still asks for a password.
>
> If you instead append: init=/bin/bash
>
> Then you get a root shell no matter what with no access to anything else.
> You can then remount / as rw if needed (mount -o remount,rw /) and run
> passwd to set a new password.

Is there a way I can make it require a password to edit the boot line at all?
I don't want anyone who happens to find my laptop, when I've walked away
from it for five minutes, to be able to get a root shell!

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists