Am Dienstag, 25. März 2008 schrieb ext Liviu Andronic:
> On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 6:41 AM, Uwe Thiem <uwix@(protected):
> > > I've revived an old Gentoo laptop, but I've forgotten the root
> > >
> > > password. I remember the password to my user account and I can log
> > > in there fine. Can I recover the root password?
> >
> > If you could passwords were useless. ;-)
> >
> > But you can boot from a LiveCD, mount your harddrive, chroot and then
> > give root another password.
>
> But then, conventional passwords are as useless. One needs no more
> than physical access to the computer, a LiveCD and a couple minutes in
> order to become the super user of your system. Basically, the password
> seems useful only to know whether anyone has changed it behind your
> back.

That's only true if you didn't do anything else to protect the system. All
the above is useless if the / filesystem is encrypted.

> I am starting to wonder why am I so attached to my root password being
> strong.. :)

Because it protects your system from abuse.

Bye...

 Dirk
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