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While drooling on their shoelaces, Mike spouted:
> Hi,
>
> I left my Linux installation for almost a year and didn't remember what
> was the root password. Can someone to help me to reset the root password?
>
> Thanks ~~
>
> - Mike

If you just want to reset it, start the machine with a linux boot
floppy/cd. Tomsrtbt on a floppy works well for this, gentoo minimal
cd's work well, phlak/knoppix/pick_your_live_cd all work for this
purpose.

Mount the drive/partition that has your installation's /etc
directory

edit the shadow file found in that directory

on the line that starts with root, delete the characters BETWEEN the
first and second colons. Make sure that you ONLY delete the
characters between the first and second colons and that you leave
the colons in the file.

reboot and you _should_ be able to login as root with no password. I
login as a regular user then 'su' to change the password - good
practice to never login as root.

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