password

[Richard P. Williamson]

To log in as root, 

>John Rackham  <sneakycat at lycos.co.uk> wrote:
>> hello  ive got a problem login to freebsd. i had a copy  of freebsd
>> given me and when i installed it  it  asks me  for 
>> a login name and password. is there a way of  findin out the login
>> name and password?

User: root
Password:  [leave blank]

Assuming you had the installation media and went through 
sysinstall et al, then you should be able to use the 
name/password that you entered during that process.  The 
commands that Sven give below will tell you what the user 
name was, but if you can't remember what the password was,
you'll need to change it to a new one.  

Once in, it is recommended you change the root password from
[nothing] to [something], if [nothing] is still the root password:

# passwd
Changing local password for root.
New password: [something]
Retype the password: [something]
passwd: updating the database...
passwd: done
#

If you ever need to change the root password again, you'll need to
log in using single user mode.  The handbook will explain how to
do that.  If you've logged in as a user, then passwd works to 
change that user's local password.  If you're logged in as root,
you can change the password of a user using 'passwd -l [username]'
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html
and '# man passwd' can help out here.

HTH,
rip


At 13:40 29/07/2004. Sven Pfeifer had this to say:
>Hi,
>
>John Rackham  <sneakycat at lycos.co.uk> wrote:
>> hello  ive got a problem login to freebsd. i had a copy  of freebsd
>> given me and when i installed it  it  asks me  for 
>> a login name and password. is there a way of  findin out the login
>> name and password?
>
>yes of course. yust log in as root (this is the system administrator)
>and type:
>
>        cat /etc/master.passwd | cut -d ":" -f 1
>
>if you can see the username, that matches your userid, set a new
>password for this username by typing:
>
>        passwd the_username_you_found_out
>
>HTH
>
>
>        Sven
>
>-- 
>Why You Can't Find Your System Administrator:
>  They are hiding under the stairs --[Simon Burr simes at tcp.co.uk]
>------------------------------------------------------[rand. sig. #24]
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