Forgot your password?

If you forget your password, ask the system administrator (root user) to assign a new password to your account. Only root can do this.

In general, no one can retrieve your old password from the /etc/shadow file. If your password is short or a single word, your system administrator—or a hacker—can easily figure it out, but you're better off with a new password.

If you're the system administrator, and you've forgotten the password for root, you need to find an alternate way to access the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files in order to reset the root password. Some possible ways to do this are:

• Boot the system from another disk or device where you can log in as root, and from there manually reset the password.
• Access the necessary files from the root account of another QNX Neutrino machine, using Qnet. For more information, see Using Qnet for Transparent Distributed Processing.
• Remove the media on which the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow are stored and install it on another QNX Neutrino machine from which you can modify the files.
• In the case of an embedded system, build a new image that contains new passwd and shadow files, and then transfer it to your target system.