Root Account Locked

Héctor H. Louzao P Sürüm F28 and newer Last review: 2021-11-21

Phenomenon

Cannot open access to console, the root account is locked in emergency mode (dracut emergency shell)

Reason

This is a known problem. It happens Fedora releases 28 and newer, which don’t require password for root account during installation Root Account and use first user added as administrator/superuser. In this case root account is locked, and if /home is inaccessible – then the system can’t use superuser/administrator account either.

What to Do?

If you find yourself in this situation and you can’t resolve problem with /home mounting from Live disk/USB, and you need access to emergency mode, the solution is simple.

  1. Boot into Live disk/usb and chroot into your Fedora installations as documented in this Fedora Quick-docs Article

    • following steps depends of your File System LVM/BTRF/LUKS.

  2. Unlock root account by supplying password for it:

    passwd root

  3. Exit chroot environment with [Ctrl-d] or

    exit

  4. Reboot your computer with GUI or with

    systemctl reboot

Want to help? Learn how to contribute to Fedora Docs ›