Question

Resetting and accessing Droplet password

Posted December 1, 2014 1.8k views

If I reset my password will this update the passwd file?

The reason that I ask is because I foolishly edited my /etc/passwd manually and in the process deleted the root user line. Now I am unable to use sudo to edit the file.

My solution is to purchase a new droplet and replicate my existing server. However I am not sure if this is truly necessary. I am fairly new to server admin, hence the foolish behaviour of manually editing my passwd file! Any info would be greatly appreciated.

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m8fyu
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2 answers
kamaln7 December 1, 2014

No, resetting the password updated /etc/shadow where the password is actually stored.

Follow Attempt Recovery with a Recovery ISO | How To Recover from File System Corruption Using Fsck and a Recovery ISO | DigitalOcean. You can skip the Set Up Networking in the Recovery Environment section.

Once you’ve mounted the filesystem, open /mnt/etc/passwd in nano or any other editor, and add the following line at the beginning:

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

Then, save the file, unmount the filesystem, and power off the droplet:

cd /
umount /mnt
poweroff

Finally, reply to the support ticket to remove the ISO image from the droplet so you can then boot your droplet normally.

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m8fyu December 27, 2014
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