How to bring a FreeBSD box up in single usr mode, and change the password.

Be sure to check the man pages.

1. Reboot the box useing Alt-Ctrl-Delete
2. When boot: comes up type:
-s
to bring the box up in single-user-mode.
3. When requested to enter a shell, press enter. This will give you a default Bourn shell.
4. To mount all of the slices type /bin/mount -a
5. Change directory to /etc and check to see what shells you have listed in your /etc/shells file. To do this, type:
cat shells
This will let you know which shells root will have access too.
6. Now edit the password file using:
vipw

If you need to manuly edit the master.passwd file you must run the make data bace afterwords:
/usr/sbin/pwd_mkdb -p /etc/master.passwd

7. Once this is done; save and then exit.
8. Then to reboot type:
sync;sync;reboot

A. Aakesson