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I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this for a while. So I somehow managed to goof up my root password and now I can’t access my remote server, when I login. I however, have sudo access through another user using SSH.

Therefore, I have root privileges, just that I can't seem to access the root login. So how can I reset the root password using root privileges from another user? Is it even possible?

EDIT: Could it be possible that my /etc/sudoers file is conflicting? Because each time I log in, it says ACCESS DENIED. I have both "root" and my other username in there.

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  • Yes, if you are a sudo user (ALL privilege) then you can try sudo -i and enter normal user password. It will go to root prompt from there you can change root password. – max Jul 14 '16 at 4:05
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    Possible duplicate of resetting the root password in linux – Giacomo1968 Jul 14 '16 at 4:11
  • @max unfortunately that didn't work. When I try to SSH using root, it tells me it can't authenticate it. Any ideas? – RyanB Jul 14 '16 at 4:30
  • Two things: ssh user@ip and then sudo passwd root {enter new password twice} and retry if this fails, did ssh root@ip EVER work ? if not its likely that the remote system is /has been hardened and disallows ANY ssh root@ip actions I personally have my laptop set in this fashion. – linuxdev2013 Jul 15 '16 at 14:00
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Become root: sudo su -

then: passwd

Also, if you want to ssh as root, check your sshd_config for PermitRootLogin. This is a security risk though, so it's better to login as a normal user and use sudo.

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  • PermitRootLogin was set to NO. Maybe that's why I wasn't able to log in? – RyanB Jul 14 '16 at 4:52
  • That didn't work. I tried resetting the password using sudo passwd root and even though it updated successfully, it still says ACCESS DENIED. What could be the issue? – RyanB Jul 14 '16 at 6:32
  • After changing PermitRootLogin=YES did you restart the SSH service? – max Jul 16 '16 at 4:31

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