how to change root password in debian

debian, Technical 3 Comments »

This is one of the problem faced by many person’s

“what if i lost the root password”

FOR DEBIAN

First thing that comes in mind is “use single user mode” but the answer is NO.
coz debian takes the system security to one more level up and by default ask’s for the root password.

so the BIG QUESTION IS HOW TO proceed further

follow these steps

1) on grub-boot prompt.
press “e” to enter edit mode

2) then press downarrow to reach the line that starts with “kernel ”
press “e” again

3) at the end of this line type in “init=/bin/sh” or “/bin/bash”

4) then press enter to make that change and press “b” to boot

in a few seconds you will be on your “#” prompt

5) only one step left
“mount -o remount rw /”

this step is necessary coz in this case root file system is mounted as read only.

6) finally type “passwd” and you get the screen to change the password

and then type in “init 6″ or “reboot”

NOTE FOR TECHNICAL USERS
those who are looking for the technical details, the main work is the init command that we passed as an argument to kernel, it told kernel to specifically run the command specified in parameter instead of working on normal routine.

TRICK = if you have any program you wish to run instead of this then you can do that too using init command only.

FOR REDHAT

use single user mode and change the password.

but that’s a potential pitfall. coz any person can start system in single user mode and get the password changed.

Blog listed in presscoverage2007 of debian

GENERAL No Comments »

I was nice to see this blog being listed in the PressCoverage 2007 Page on debian’s site.

The listing is under the heading – General Coverage of GNU/Linux and Free Software

and is for the article regarding COMPIZ on DEBIAN.

bootsplash a.k.a. Splashy on Debian

debian, Technical 7 Comments »

Tired of watching screens full of hardware releated info scrolling past during Startup and shutdown.

Welcome to the world of Splash Screen, Screenshots Here

In earlier stage bootsplash screen was configured throught a lot of kernel hacking and using it has a hell lot of hardwork including recompilling of kernel.

But the newest form SPLASHY in a userspace implementation of kernel so that it provides all the necessary features right at userspace.

In debian installing splashy is just a matter of few commands

1) IF you don’t have unstable repo’s in your source list then follow it otherwise skip to step 3

echo "deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
echo "deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

2) then apt-get update

3) last apt-get install splashy splashy-themes

After this what you need to is just one thing

open your menu.lst (/boot/grub/menu.lst)
and in the line with kernel value add these words at the end of that line

"vga=791 splash quiet"

Ex : – kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda8 ro vga=791 splash quiet

4)THIS STEP IS OPTIONAL
To run Splashy from initramfs you need to create a new initramfs image. An initramfs image is a little system that is

launched during the kernel’s initalization, before the system starts.

During Splashy’s installation Splashy sets everything up so you can get it integrated into initramfs whenever you wish by

just running a single command.

But first you must edit /etc/default/splashy and set ENABLE_INITRAMFS=1 so that Splashy will integrate itself into future initramfs images.

update-initramfs -u -t -k `uname -r`

then reboot and you will have a slashy desktop

ADVANCE SETTINGS

All the themes are by defaults installed in /etc/splashy/themes

configuration for splashy is in/etc/splashy/config.xml

and configuration for respective themes is available in /etc/splash/themes/ in XML file format

some of the configuration’s that can be done include changing the colour theme as well as the progress bar size color

direction and image shown.

TO CHANGE THEME

Once the theme is installed, just run splashy_config -s where name is the name of the theme

To get the complete list of all the splashy themes installed just type in

splashy_config --info

I hope this article will help you all.

 splashy

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