Need to login on to LINUX machine – but don’t have the privilege? – or want to gain root privilege?
Pre Requisite – you need the access physical or command line or console access to reboot the machine.

Follow the steps :-

1. The very first screen when you restart the linux machine – press an enter or space whichever works and this will take you to the snapshot of step 2.

Fig 1

2. You will get this screen –

Fig 2

Press Enter. You will get the screen in Fig.3

Fig 3

Press e in the end of 2^nd line , the one starting with kernel, to enter the edit mode.

3. You will get the screen in fig 4, add “s” at the end to login next time in single user mode Type Enter

4. After the step 3 you will get this screen, press b to reboot.

6. After the reboot, below is the screen you will get-

Now you can change the password by typing passwd,it won’t ask you this time for the old password.

Now, you have successfully changed the root password.

PS : Remove the “s “, that you have put in there previously by using the same procedure. And next time you reboot you can login as root!!

Any query/help/suggestion/feedback regarding this is welcome. Please feel free 🙂