Author: Dan

This can be used to reset forgotten root passwords in paravirtualised VM’s running on the Xen hypervisor.

1. Identify target VM name.

virsh list --all

2. Shutdown the target VM.

virsh shutdown vm-name-goes-here

3. Start the VM back up again in console mode.

xm create -c vm-name-goes-here

4. Quickly stop the boot process on the grub menu and hit the a key on the default kernel. Once the kernel parameters appear, append the number 1 to the end of the line. Then hit enter to continue with the VM boot.

5. You should then be dropped into a single user mode console, allowing you to reset the password as you would on a physical host.

6. Enter this command to change the root password, you have to enter the new password twice when prompted onscreen.

passwd

7. Reboot

reboot