Resetting root password without login

[xX_Spiidey_Xx]

so I might I go about popping the CMOS battery in a VM?

In the real world, we don't use VMs for production. VMs are for local/internally networked development and testing. So go ahead and pop all the CMOS batteries in VMs as you like. The VM disk is stored somewhere, and when found, can be mounted and broken into.

[shadow_grinder]

I was playing around with this in BT4 (thanks xX_Spiidey_Xx) and for some reason I have yet come to understand it worked the first time, but refused to change the password any subsequent times.

However this similar set of steps worked every time:

Press ESC at Grub prompt on boot
Select first line, hit e
Select kernel line, hit e
Add "init=/bin/bash" to end of line preceded by a space
Hit enter
Hit b
At prompt, run "mount -o rw,remount /"
Run "passwd"; enter new password in both following prompts
Run "mount -o ro,remount /"
Hit Ctrl+D to start a kernel panic and hang
Power off machine and reboot as normal

Note: You can also add "panic=5" after the "init=/bin/bash" on the kernel line to have the machine automatically reboot in 5 seconds after it hits a kernel panic

If anyone knows why the original set of commands only worked the first time around I'd be interested. Thanks again xX_Spiidey_Xx