

Ask HN: How to regain access to my dedicated server? - etuil

The story: 
We are a team that uses a dedicated server Ubuntu 9.10 (don&#x27;t say a word... &quot;updates are for the weak&quot;...) And the guy who was responsible for being a &quot;sysop&quot; recently disappeared into the abyss of dark sorcery of some kind or just watching cat videos on youtube. However he did not leave us any credentials to access the server and we need to ssh into it...<p>So far:
I managed to find credentials to our server supplier from where I got the ips and ports we are using... 
Got a account for Lantronix spider KVM<p>I&#x27;ve got a working ftp account which has reading access to everything... From where I was able to see in &#x2F;home directory some users...<p>Any input on what my options are?<p>P.S. All of this hustle to start the apache
no comment!
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Lorenz-Kraft
Hi,

it might be a good idea to ask your server provider/hoster if they have a
rescue console. Many big provider offer this service to simply remote install
any OS of your desire (or a predefined mini linux rescue shell). The rescue
console mostly works like this: The hoster has an internal tftp (yes, tftp)
where the server can boot any iso from. So the main boot sequence is something
like this:

1: boot from network (tftp) 2: boot from medium (cd, usb, etc.) 3: boot from
disk

I once had an issue with my Firewall and the usb driver that the KVM switch
provided just outputted strange signs, so it was unuseable. But a quick boot
into the rescue console, mounting the HD and changing the Firewall config made
it all a breeze.

Greets,

Chris

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therealidiot
Are you able to restart the box? If you have KVM access, you could restart it
into single user mode (assuming it has not been disabled) and work from there

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etuil
Hey thanks for your reply, I did restart the box, but once I open the console
it does asks me for login/password

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therealidiot
Can you send ctrl+alt+del through the kvm? if so, maybe this will cause it to
restart so you can access the bootloader

~~~
angdis
OK, but what can you do after you get in through the bootloader?

~~~
etuil
If you are not able to boot it into recovery (could ask you for root password)
you need to edit the kernel by editing "ro" (or "ro quiet ..." something) and
changing it to rw init=/bin/bash .. than boot up by pressing [ctrl]+x and
voila from there just change the root password via "passwd root" restart and
ta daah root password changed

