RHEL 9 Root Password Recovery: Your Quick & Easy Solution to Regain Access

If you’ve lost your root password on RHEL 9 and can no longer access root privileges, there’s no need to panic. Follow these steps to reset your root password and regain access.

Step 1: Reboot the System and Access the GRUB Boot Loader

If you’re logged in via another user account (not as root), you can reboot the system using the following command

cmd$ reboot

When the GRUB boot loader menu appears, quickly press e on your keyboard to edit the boot parameters.

This will take you to the GRUB edit screen, where you can modify the boot sequence.

Step 2: Modify the Boot Sequence

• In the GRUB edit screen, locate the line that starts with linux or linux16. This is usually the second last line on the screen.
• At the end of this line, add the following parameters:

Add at then end of second last like rd.break enforcing=0

rd.break enforcing=0

enforcing=0 will disale the SELinux.

rd.break pauses the boot process and loads you into the RAM disk (initramfs), allowing you to modify system files.

After adding the parameters, press Ctrl + X to boot with the modified parameters.

This will take you to a shell prompt labeled switch_root:#.

Step 3: Remount /sysroot with Read and Write Privileges

At the shell prompt, remount the /sysroot directory with read and write privileges using the following command

mount -o remount,rw /sysroot

Step 4: Change the Apparent Root Directory to /sysroot

Change the root directory to /sysroot by running:

chroot /sysroot

stpe5: Reset root password

Now we can rest the root passwod via the following command

passwd root

step 6 Exit & login

reboot your system and login with root account

Step 7: Restore SELinux Context for /etc/shadow

After logging in as root, you need to restore the SELinux context for the /etc/shadow file by running:

restorecon /etc/shadow

This step ensures that the SELinux policy is correctly applied to the password file.

Thank you

Hope you like it