While I'm generally leery of giving an answer to a "help, I've forgotten the
system manager's password" type question [because from this side of the
e-mail fence I have no real way of knowing the legitimacy of the request]
you've given a "good enough" indication you aren't a random hacker breaking
in to a system you don't own or manage -- namely, you have physical access
to the console and can boot from floppy.  [akin to having the key that
allows CTRL-B on the console of a 9x9]

Once you've booted in "single user mode", you ARE logged on and should not
need to log in again -- from the "bash#" prompt, change to the /etc
directory and look at the passwd file -- if it is truly "corrupted", it
should be anywhere from partially to totally unreadable; if instead all the
passwords have been "mangled" [maliciously or otherwise], everything will
"look OK", but the password field of each entry [line] of the file will be
different from what it used to be...

reference the man page for /etc/passwd for the format of this file and take
steps accordingly to repair the file [I hope you're "vi" skills are up to
date!]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: P ARRECHO1 [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2000 3:05 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Corrupted password? Please help !!!
>
>
> Hi: I have Linux Red Hat V6.0 running on a Pentium II PC,
> some how the password
> got corrupted, because now the system will NOT let me logon,
> nor as a root or
> as a normal user.
> Reading the installation guide on p227, it says that if
> /etc/passwd got
> corrupted to boot into single mode by typing Linux 1 at the
> LILO boot prompt,
> which I did and the system came up with this prompt #bash or
> something similar,
> I do not know what to do now, I tried the command login and
> it did ask me for
> the password, but again it did not like the answer.
> If any body have ay ideas? suggestions they are very welcome
> TIA
>