Debian Squeeze change root password
Access your server through your IPMI and use the console redirect and then do one of the following.
Method 1
Boot into grub, select single user but do not press enter.
Press e to go into edit mode.
Scroll down to the kernel line, it starts with "linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6……."
Scroll to the end of that line and press space key once and type init=/bin/bash
Press Ctrl X to boot
# Remount / as Read/Write
mount -rw -o remount /
# Change password with
passwd
# type new password, confirm and hit enter and then reboot.
Method 2
Boot from another installation of Debian. (One can use a LiveCD to get access to the "/" partition.)
Then, mount the partition where you have Squeeze's "/", then changed directory to /mnt/etc
Used vim / nano as an editor to edit the file shadow.
Find the line starting with root:
Delete everything between the first and second colons (:), and the line will now look like:
root::$6$fsdsdgdsg74.:14862:0:99999:7:::
Reboot as root without a password.
At the end use passwd to set a new root password.
Reboot and login as root with the new root password.
