Home / server / Questions / 1038717
In Process
Mike Meidl
Asked: 2020-10-15 08:13:31 +0800 CST

Red Hat 7 reset password asks for for Root password

  • 772

I am trying to reset the root password on a rhel 7 machine

Following one of the many articles online

I first hit 'e' to get into edit mode

However after I do that is asks for a username and password?

What am I doing wrong?

I have tried putting in random passwords for root, however all it will do is reboot the machine back to the grub menu

Server is running on VMware 6.7

enter image description here

enter image description here

rhel7 password-reset

1 Answers

  1. From the screenshot of the username prompt, it looks like password protection has been enabled for your grub menu: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Passwords

    This password protection is set in the grub configuration file. Given you don't have login access to the machine, a work-around for that is to boot off a liveCD, and modify the grub config from there.

    Really, any recent linux iso would do, and mount as cd in Vmware

    There is a tutorial on doing that here: https://www.computernetworkingnotes.com/rhce-study-guide/how-to-reset-grub-password-in-linux.html

    and here: https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-recovering-grub-boot-loader-password.html

    you are basically looking for a line like so, and removing it:

    password --md5 $1$9sdflksdf/sdf44k
    • 0