unable to login as root

[urzu]

hi all
i have a debian distribution
i was actually trying out various commands in the terminal
and i hit chsh and wanted to activate zshell
which my distribution didin't have
and now after that my pc doesnot allow me to login as root

[yancek]

Seems as you changed the shell to one you don't have, try changing it back. Check the site below or google Linux chsh, you'll get lots of sites:

Step-by-step how to change login shell using Linux chsh command. | Linux Windows Install Setup Configuration Project

[urzu]

sorry ,
but i followed the steps , it didnt work it says that /bin/zshell not present
and it still doesnt allow me to login as root
some other way or ther is something i don know

[Jonathan183]

what does cat /etc/shells list?

[urzu]

cat/etc/shells lists the following things

/bin/csh
/bin/sh
/usr/bin/es
/usr/bin/ksh
/bin/ksh
/usr/bin/rc
/usr/bin/tcsh
/bin/tcsh
/usr/bin/esh
/bin/dash
/bin/bash
/bin/rbash


but where do i go from here

[MikeTbob]

What happens if you install zshell? I think that should allow you to login as root at the least....then you go about fixing this mess.

[urzu]

What happens if you install zshell? I think that should allow you to login as root at the least....then you go about fixing this mess.

it says chsh: bin/zshell is an invalid shell

and the error which it returns on loging as root is
Cannot execute /bin/zsh: No such file or directory

and the command echo$shell
doesnot return me anything , instead returns me thebterminal prompt again

[Jonathan183]

Do you have another user able to modify /etc/passwd ... or able to write to /bin ?
If you do then change /etc/passwd entry for root to /bin/bash ... or even symlink /bin/zsh to /bin/bash I think should allow root login.

[atreyu]

You could always reboot and at the grub prompt, append the following to the kernel args:

init=/bin/sh

That will boot you into a kind of emergency mode where you'll be root (there is not even a password prompt - typically), and the bash shell will be your command line interpreter, regardless of what is in /etc/passwd. Then you can do whatever.

[urzu]

You could always reboot and at the grub prompt, append the following to the kernel args:

init=/bin/sh

That will boot you into a kind of emergency mode where you'll be root (there is not even a password prompt - typically), and the bash shell will be your command line interpreter, regardless of what is in /etc/passwd. Then you can do whatever.

nothin happens the emergency mode doesnt turn up
further after rebooting the system the same error persists, and the error opens a window , as follows

Failed to run /usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator as user root.

Failed to communicate with gksu-run-helper.

Received:

While expecting:
gksu: waiting