help! i zipped my shadow file

[deforge]

somebody please help!
i accidentally zipped my shadow file and rebooted my computer.
so now I have only a shadow- and a shadow.gz file in /etc.
i tried using knoppix to rename shadow- or unzip shadow.gz but it says the file is read only and wont let me change the permissions on it.
is there anyway to force a rename or get past the protection. it is my hard drive for school and all my work is on it. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks

[white scorpion]

you should be able to change it with knoppix...
did you mount the drive read-writable??
also try chown and chmod the file, i did this before by writing to my /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow file, so i don't see why you would not be able to change it...

if you use a bootloader, try adding 1 to the kernel options, this will allow you to boot with runlevel 1 and that means logging in as root with (on most systems) no password required.. this also might be an option..

let us know if you got it solved..

[deforge]

i tried the chown and chmod using knoppix.

how exactly do you do the bootloader option you mentioned?

thanks.

[stathisx]

to change to runlevel 1 you can boot normally and when u get into ur graphical desktop press alt+ctrl+F1 .then after typing passwords press telinit 1 or init 1 to change to runlevel 1(login as root).
to change the permissions to the file u mentioned use chmod command ....

[deforge]

I figured it out.

i used a rescue disk and entered linux single then just went to the /etc dir and unzipped my shadow file.

thanks for all the help though.

[white scorpion]

i used a rescue disk and entered linux single then just went to the /etc dir and unzipped my shadow file.

that is runlevel 1


what i meant was, suppose you use grub, when you see the options to boot your partition at startup (in grub) just hit "a" to add extra kernel parameters to the boot, and all you have to do is type 1 at the end, that is <space> , 1 , because it must be seperated from the other options otherwise you will get an error...