How to recover Root Password in CentOS 6

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In this article, you will learn, how to recover Root Password in CentOS 6 or other Red hat based Linux OS. #centlinux #linux #recovery

Problem Statement:

As we know that, the root is the superuser in every Linux distros. We often come to situations, where, the root password is not available. Although it is trivial to reset root password, if you have a user with sudo rights. otherwise it becomes a little tricky. To reset the password of root user we required physical access to the machine or in case of virtual machines we need console access via respective VM Manager.

In this post, we will reset the root password of a RHEL 6 Server.

Read Also: Create OpenLDAP Address Book in CentOS 7

Recover Root Password in CentOS 6:

Start your RHEL 6 machine and try to login with root user.

CentOS 6 Startup
CentOS 6 CLI Login Prompt

We could’t login to our RHEL 6 machine, because we didn’t know the root password.

Login with another user and restart the machine.

CentOS 6 CLI Reboot

At GRUB boot menu, press e to edit the menu entry.

CentOS 6 GRUB Menu
CentOS 6 Edit GRUB Menu

Go the line that contains kernel command and press e to edit it.

CentOS 6 GRUB Edit Kernel Command (Current)

Append 1 at the end of this command and press <ENTER> to save changes.

CentOS 6 GRUB Edit Kernel Command (New)
CentOS 6 GRUB Menu (New)

Press b to boot the machine.

CentOS 6 Single User CLI

The system now boots into Single User mode, without asking for any password.

Use the passwd command to reset the password of root.

CentOS 6 Single User CLI (passwd)

Restart the machine and login with new password.

CentOS 6 Single User CLI (reboot)
CentOS 6 CLI (root user)

root password of your CentOS / RHEL 6 machine has been recovered.

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