knoppix hdinstall password

[amazon10x]

i installed knoppix 3.3 to my harddrive using knoppix-installer. it asked for my password for the root account and i told it to set it to rootpass. now when i try and install an rpm and it asks for the root password when i type that in it says that there has been an "authentication error" why wasnt the password set to what i told it to?

 

[Christoph]

First of all, Knoppix is based on Debian, so you don't need to install most software via RPM. Debian's package management system is called apt-get and it's much easier to use than RPM. If you're not familiar with apt-get, it takes about a minute to explain.
Second, the password problem is easy to fix. Just boot from the Knoppix CD into runlevel 2 (type knoppix 2 at the boot prompt). Mount the partition where /etc is. Then edit /etc/passwd on that partition, deleting the "x" between two colons after "root" (probably the first line).
This will make your system monumentally insecure, but it will allow you to log in as root without a password. When you're done, reboot, log in as root and change the password with passwd.

Edit: You should also have a better root password. You may not be concerned about security now, but picking good passwords is an important habit to form. What I do is memorize a string of memorable gibberish and append a memorable word or pseudo-word to it depending on what the password is used for.
Whatever you do, don't post your root password on a forum like this. If someone were able to find your IP address, Bad Things would happen.

 

[Arkaine23]

Yeah, apt-get is easy to use for installing thinsg. Just search for debian's official site and list of packages with googel and you can scope out what's available. Knoppix is a stable version, though it has a few unstable or testing packages installed too. There are some advanced commands for dpkg and apt that let you search for the names of packages you want without having to visit the site.

If you need to install an rpm, you will probably have to use the alien command. But apt-get always makes things easy to add/remove/upgrade, so use it.

 

[sensai]

try this:::
mkdir /mnt/myroot
mount /dev/hda4 /mnt/myroot
mount -t proc /proc mnt/myroot/proc
chroot /mnt/myroot /bin/bash
passwd
{enter your desired password}
exit
umount /mnt/myroot/proc
umount /mnt/myroot
reboot


dont forget your password
also a common mistake ive done is had cap locks on while typing my root pasword
check the cap lock first