Boston University Linux

There is a common problem with upgrades from BU Linux 3.0 (Doolittle) to 4.0 (Bossanova). Luckily, it's not too hard to fix. Note that this problem does not exist when upgrading to BU Linux 4.5 (Velouria).

If you can log in as a user with administrative (wheel group) access, there's just one step: run sudo authconfig --kickstart to rewrite your authentication configuration files to what should be correct.

If you can't get access to an administrative account, you need to boot into single user mode to fix the problem:

1. reboot the system
2. at the GRUB bootloader prompt press 'p' to enter the bootloader password and unlock GRUB's administrative options. This password will be intially set to whatever you chose as your root password in the installer.
3. press 'a' to append a keyword to the kernel boot line.
4. type the keyword single, and press the enter key.
5. the system will boot, and ask for the root password, and then put you at a command prompt in single-user mode.

Once in single user mode, run authconfig --kickstart as above. Then, simply reboot with the reboot command, and when the machine comes back up, everything should be fine.