Topic: Resetting Admin password

[Bob Cole]

OK, OK, so I'm an idiot...  

I've been running e-smith 3.0 as a file server / dialup gateway at the small church I attend.  I loaded it up ? about a year ago on an old 486 which "couldn't handle" Winders and it has been running just niftily since... I think I've had it down 3x in that time, for swapping out a bad HD (chew on that one, Bill!)

Anyways, I think I'm a victim of your success... heh.  I changed the admin password and (thought I) gave it to one of the ladies in the church office for safekeeping.  Since it's not the one in my basement, I haven't used it and (duh!) forgot the admin password.  Well, I now have need to add another user, and since it's my *wife* who just started working in the church office, I'm really feeling like a bit of an idiot here...

I'm not a guru (yet!), but I'm also not quite a newbie, so OK, lets just su in from the console and use passwd to change it... except when I pull up the administrative page and try to log in using admin and the new password, I'm unable to authenticate.

D'OH!

OK, I've checked the basics, reset the PW again in case my fingers aren't working either, and yes, I did read the "fine" manual that I downloaded with the "fine" product.

GULP GULP GULP <--- That's my pride as I humbly request any assistance in seeing the simple piece that I am obviously overlooking.

And if you think about it, this is actually a rather good testimonial for e-smith...

Thanks in advance,

Bob
Who is more used to *solving* problems from users who make idiot mistakes like this

[Orville Carter]

>>OK, OK, so I'm an idiot...


Story of my life,,,,, and I am suppose to be a geek, Bob.
Dont be so hard on yourself. I have done that a few times
with RedHat Linux over the past two years.

I dont know of any easy solution, except reinstall the software from scratch,
or start praying for a miracle.

OC

[Charlie Brady]

Orville Carter wrote:

> I dont know of any easy solution, except reinstall the software
> from scratch, or start praying for a miracle.

Running:

/usr/bin/htpasswd /etc/httpd/users admin

should allow admin to log in using the web interface. You should reset the admin password once you log in OK.

Regards

Charlie

[Orville Carter]

Charlie,

That is one more reason to keep public access (telnet) turned off.

Yikes!

[Dan]

Well, you _do_ still need to be logged in as root to do that...  But yes, public telnet is a definite security hole.

[Bob Cole]

Nifty! Worked like a charm!

(And I did have them put a copy in a nice safe place... plus a hardcopy of the above note in my personal archives

Regarding the telnet references, yeah, keeping telnet and FTP open is quite risky with all the kiddiez around... any tweaking I've had to do (setting up ISA NICs instead of PCI, for example) is done from the console.

Thanks again for the assist!

Bob