How to Reset Your Linode Root Password
Published in
2 min readMay 12, 2016
We’ve all been there, losing passwords is like leaving the keys in the couch. Luckily, Linode has a lost-password solution built into the Linode Manager:
Resetting from the Linode Manager:
- Click the Linodes tab. A list of your Linodes appears.
- Select a Linode. The Linode’s dashboard appears.
- Click Shut down to turn off your Linode. Monitor the Host Job Queue for a message indicating that your Linode has shut down.
- Click the Rescue tab. The rescue webpage appears.
- Select your primary disk from the Filesystem menu.
- Enter a new password for the root user in the New Password field.
- Click Reset Root Password. The Linode’s dashboard appears.
- Click Boot to turn on your Linode.
Resetting from Rescue Mode:
- Put your server in rescue mode
- LISH in
- Mount and chroot into your disks
- Then run a passwd command.
You can find the steps to mount and chroot here, but if you’re using a KVM enabled host, please change the referenced xvda to sda.
Happy sys-admin-ing!
If your server still does not recognize the changed password despite manually changing it, there may be something wrong with the filesystem and you’ll want to run a filesystem check.