Tue Aug 13 22:38:20 BST 2013

Buffalo Linkstation Password Woes

Resetting passwords on a Buffalo Linkstation

I was a little surprised to see that my password didn't work to log into my Buffalo LinkStation...

I checked my records and the password should have been what I was trying, however to no avail. So..! To Google!

Basically the storage is partitioned and runs a version of Linux (didn't investigate further than that), so I popped the drive into another machine to access the data within.

My first inclination was to check /etc/passwd, however this was the olden days...

The 'new' way is to update /etc/shadow (backing up first), change the line you want to change (we'll use 'phill')...
phill:<password hash>:12345:0:99999:7;
and change it to:
phill::12345:0:99999:7;
(no hash at all)
Replicate the changes in /etc/shadow- (backing up as you go...)

And you should now be able to log in without a password :) -----

Posted by Phill | Permalink