Categories: How To

Reset root password in Debian

How to reset root password in single user mode in Debian ?

Ans :

At grub-boot loader screen. Select Recovery mode the version of the kernel that you wish to boot and type e for edit. Select the line that starts with kernel and type e to edit the line.

Go to the end of the line and type init=/bin/bash as a separate one word (press the spacebar and then type init=/bin/bash). Press enter key to exit edit mode.

Back at the GRUB screen, type ‘ b‘ to boot into single user mode

This causes the system to boot the kernel and run /bin/sh instead of its standard init.

Now you have gained root privileges and a root shell. Since / is currently mounted read-only and many disk partitions have not been mounted yet, you must do the following to have a reasonably functioning system.

# mount -n -o remount,rw /

# mount -avt nonfs,noproc,nosmbfs

# cd /etc

# passwd

Now enter the new password and reboot the server and then you can able to access your server with new password.


Vishwajit Kale
Vishwajit Kale blazed onto the digital marketing scene back in 2015 and is the digital marketing strategist of Hostripples, a company that aims to provide affordable web hosting solutions. Vishwajit is experienced in digital and content marketing along with SEO. He's fond of writing technology blogs, traveling and reading.

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