Root password?

[T J Tulley]

During installation of Elyssa the option is offered to define a root password, but this is not recommended. The program states that if it is not set, an arbitrary password will be allocated.

Now during a failed boot process, I am asked to enter the root password in order to undertake maintenance. Is is possible to discover the password set by the system?

[miket]

Hi !

During installation of Elyssa the option is offered to define a root password, but this is not recommended. The program states that if it is not set, an arbitrary password will be allocated.

Now during a failed boot process, I am asked to enter the root password in order to undertake maintenance. Is is possible to discover the password set by the system?

Nope ... and the recommendation is incorrect !
A root password should ALWAYS be set during installation !!!

What is causing your boot to fail ?

Mike.

[T J Tulley]

Thanks Mike:
Causing boot to fail? Long story - see post topic "Please help - - " in this forum dated 19/8/08.

At that time I was seeing in the boot screen "fsck failed - do it manually" with other stuff - then BusyBox. This morning that screen doesn't appear - but I get BusyBox after about 30 secs of reciprocating progress bar.
Recovery mode shows at end of its log:

"Mounting /root/dev on /dev/static/dev failed - no such file or directory
Mounting /sys on /root/sys failed - no such fille or directory
Mounting /proc on /root/proc failed - no such fille or directory
Target system doesn't have /sbin/init"

Then BusyBox appears. Meanwhile I'm fed up with having to handle Firefox and webmail on this laptop under Win-XP (without external hd connected - see other post, topic "New install on laptop won't start" dated 18/8/08 in this forum).

I'm next going to try that external (USB) hd on the PC - using Supergrub and booting directly - but I'm worried because of inconsistency in /boot/grub/device.map between that install and the native one in the PC.

Thanks again -