where is the root password ?

[sanjiv]

I want to know where in the machine will the root password be stored...and how can i retrieve it ?? help please ....

[bob]

Moved to General Support (Guides & How-to's is for posting your solutions to problems)

[darkshadow]

the users' passwords are stored in /etc/shadow but they are crypted

Fedora

[aleph]

The plain text passwords are never stored on disk. The encrypted passwords are in the file /etc/shadow.

Recovering the plain text password from the encrypted passwords is very difficult, because the encryption function is designed to be "one-way only" i.e. the inverse is much more expensive to calculate than the encryption function itself. It is still possible to use some space-time tradeoff (google "rainbow table") to accelerate brute-force attack but that may still not be practical.

I guess you lost the root password? Do a forum search for that. There are plenty of posts about it

[JonathanR]

Originally Posted by balkrishna

during startup highlight fedora option in grub. press e - which stands for edit
You will see something like:
root (hd0,..
kernel .....
initrd .....

highlight kernel and press e again.
you will see something like
.... rhgb quiet
add single to it
finally u get :
..... rhgb quiet single
press ESC and press b. /*This will boot with that argument*/
This is known as the single user mode and grants you superuser access to your machine.
It will direct you to a command line screen with root access.
Now you can reset your password simply by:
passwd
/*And following the steps*/
Your root password has been changed.

If you have lost your grub password(in case u have 1) & root password reinstall grub and follow the same proceedure.

Doing a quick search, I found this post, which I think will help you.

[kudzu]

The root pass is encrypted with md5 and stored at /etc/shadow and i suggest that it is difficult to retrieve...
case1
so in the boot process at grub press any key so the system will not continue boot go to the fisrt option which is your linux boot and press e ( for edit ) then go to the kernel line and press e again.
leave all kernel options intact and and an 1 at the end.

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.15-78.2.23.fc9.i686 ro root=UUID=twqwqe rhgb quiet 1

enter or esc and then press b for the system to boot

it will boot in single user mode and you can change the pass using command

passwd root

type the new pass and reboot system....

case 2
you can do all the above considering grub is not pass protected
if it is pass protected boot from a cd/dvd go to rescue mode after a few yes and okays at the prompt type

 chroot  /mnt /sysimage

and

passwd root

type the new pass and all will be ok

PS: You can use a prog called john the ripper to retrieve the pass from the shadow file but better enter a new one with the above ways

[aleph]

Originally Posted by kudzu

The root pass is encrypted with md5

In F10 the default is actually SHA512, making rainbow table attacks more difficult.

To determine which secure algorithm is used, look at the first $-delimited field: 1 for MD5, 6 for SHA512.