A cardinal rule with computer security is that if you have physical access to a computer, you can pretty much do whatever your heart desires to it. Luckily, this includes removing the grub password from a linux box so that you can restore the root password…
Your best course of action in doing this is to download a bootable linux cd. The one that I tested this with is a worthwhile download even if you’re just reading this for fun.
There are x steps involved with removing grub passwords:
- Boot Backtrack Live Cd
- Log in, and navigate to the “/mnt” directory
- Then go to the partition that corresponds to your hard drive (if you only have one hard drive it’s likely “hda1“, or “/mnt/hda1“
- Within that directory, navigate to “boot/grub”, and open “menu.lst” in a text editor
- Comment out all lines that start with “password“
- Restart Computer, and enjoy a password-less grub bootloader.
Feel free to leave your mind in the comments and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
Jon