On Tue, 5 Feb 2008, Eric F Crist wrote: >> But usually the first step in running the passwd command is to enter >> the existing password, which you don't know (doesn't it work that way >> for root passwords). > > Mike, you're wrong here. Well, I forgot the question mark before the close paren. > On every *nix system I've been on, the root user doesn't have to enter > the old password in order to change the password for a given user. The > command above would work, while it would only ask the user issuing the > command for their current password, and the new password (twice) for the > given user. Yep, you are right. That command was: sudo passwd root Thanks for the tip! Mike