Mastering Linux Security and Hardening - Second Edition

Hands-on lab – resetting the password for Red Hat/CentOS

With only one very minor exception, this procedure works exactly the same on both CentOS 7 and CentOS 8. Let's get started:

1. Boot the virtual machine. When the boot menu comes up, interrupt the boot process by hitting the down arrow key once. Then, hit the up arrow key once to select the default boot option:

2. Hit the E key to edit the kernel parameters. When the GRUB 2 configuration comes up, cursor down until you see this line:

Note that on CentOS 7, the line begins with linux16, as ...