Unable to reinstall from Excito USB stick

[MarcC]

Hello,

I've managed to lose my newly modified root password on my recently acquired B3.

The B3 still runs very smoothly, but obviously, I can't survive very long in this situation. So I tried to reinstall the whole system from scratch, using the Reinstall USB stick I bought along with the B3. I believe I did exactly like said in the manual (turn off, remove power cord, insert USB, press power button while putting back power cord until light turns green) but the system remains as previously: my accounts remain, the hostname is still modified (not b3) ... and the root password is still not 'excito' :S

For the sake of it, I've also tried using a usual USB stick I had, on which I unzipped the file from http://update.excito.net/install/latest/b3/

In both cases, the light does turn green at startup, during maybe 20-30 seconds, then it turns purple for another 30 seconds and then it turns blue.

I understand that a usual USB stick may not be suitable (partition table issue) but I'm confident that the one bought on the site wouldn't have that same problem. Would you have an idea of what could be the problem and how I can get to reinit the root password?

I'd add that I've tried it with ethernet cables plugged and unplugged, that the USB stick bought on the site cannot be mounted on an ubuntu machine, and that the usual USB stick hasn't been modified from the reinstall attempt (no log file appeared).

Cheers
Marc

[ryz]

You do not need to reinstall the whole system to change the root password. It is enough to boot it in the rescue mode with the Excito USB stick. So if you can get that to work it is enough.

When you have been able to login to Bubba over ssh when runnig the rescue system all you need to do is create an temporary directory, mount the root partition there and then change the file /etc/shadow.

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mkdir fixit
mount /dev/sda1 fixit
vi fixit/etc/shadow

First read some documentation on how to use vi because if you do not know how to use it it is impossible to understand how to edit and save a file http://www.washington.edu/computing/unix/vi.html. The reason we use vi here is because it is the one editor I now is installed in the rescue system. Scroll down to the line containing the root user’s information, which looks something like

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root:weeWRSF!sfDFs:12581:0:99999:7:::

Delete everything between the first and second colons, so that the line looks like

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root::12581:0:99999:7:::

unmount the root partition

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unmount fixit

Then reboot the system. Now the root account should have an empty password so you should change it as soon as possible. It is best if you do not connect the Bubba to outside world until you have changed the root password.

[MarcC]

Cheers. I'll look into it tonight... hoping I can get the B3 to boot on any of my USB sticks

[MarcC]

Hi again,

Thanks a lot: You're solution worked out!


For those out there who may read some day my booting problem and recognize their own problem, here's the part I forgot when creating the rescue USB stick: you need to set the "bootable" flag on the disk

Apart from that (obvious) point I forgot, all the indications provided above worked great.

It still doesn't explain why the dedicated Excito-made rescue disk didn't work out-of-the-box, but the B3 is so awesome I'll very soon forget about that small misapp

Thanks again
Marc