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I try to change my root password on my Xenserver 6.0. I follow these steps:

  • enter boot: menu.c32
  • selecet xe-serial and press tab
  • add "single" before the 2nd triple hyphens and i press enter. I have that:

    mboot.c32 /boot/xen.gz com1=115200,8n1 console=com1, vga mem=1024G dom0_max_vcpus4 dom0_mem=752M lowmem_emergency_pool=1M crashkernel=64M@32M single --- /boot/vmlinuz-2.6-xen root=LABEL=root-rodraxar ro console=tty0 xencons=hvc console=hvc0 --- /boot/initrd-2.6-xen.img

I have commande on the screen and it's stop at: ext3-fs: monted filesystem with ordered data mode.

Can you help me?

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3 Answers

Well, this may sound funny to you, but one follows all the steps in case of issues, no matter how crazy they are to get rid of them. when you see the console of the xenserver do you get the quit option in the last below the local command shell option, if you are lucky to get.

You probably have to create a Linux Rescue CD/DVD and boot it, then mount the /dev/sda1 partition and edit out the root password field in /etc/passwd (the second field containing the encrypted password). You can then boot it without a password and reset the password to whatever you wish. You could also paste in the similarly encrypted password from another system where you of course know the password.

There are some other tricks, like removing the hard drive and mounting it as an extra device on another system so you can similarly mount the root partition on some other mount point and gain access to editing the password file.

Only this has came to mind uptill now . Hope this will work for you.

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Hi jeorge and thanks for your answer. Unfortunately i haven't the shell prompt befor the "ext3-fs: monted filesystem with ordered data mode." message and i have no Linux Rescue CD. What is strange is that i can start my Xenserver correctly if i don't make this boot process, but i don't know about the VM (because VM are down and no root password to start it). Do you think i can acces to the shell prompt through another way? perhaps with another mboot.c32... sequence? –  Michlaou Nov 22 '12 at 18:27
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I had exactly the same issue, after trying several times, I got it working after I select "XE" instead of xe-serial


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Burn a Linux install cd for Ubuntu or suse. Choose the rescue option and mount your drive. Chroot into your mounted environment and run passwd root.

Instructions here: http://m.linuxjournal.com/content/resetting-root-password

You have 0 excuse for not having a Linux install cd lying around

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