su passwd mangled

[Reinhold Rumberger]

On Sunday 08 August 2010, Brian Wootton wrote:
> Help, can anybody tell me how to reset my root password
> without having to re-install the OS. I've had the same su
> passwd for years and never change it, so I wonder how the
> system managed to screw mine up.
> brian

Did you leave sudo alone? If so, "sudo su -" will drop you into a 
root shell where you can do anything you like.
Another way is to use a live system to change the password, but I 
won't go into that here.
If it's still possible to set the path to the init used for booting 
within grub, there'd be a third way.

  --Reinhold