Reset root Password on a LiveCD USB

It may become desirable to clear the password on the LiveCD.

The root password is preserved within the COW partition at cow:rw/etc/shadow. This is the modified copy of the /etc/shadow file used by the operating system.

If a site/user needs to reset/clear the password for root, they can mount their USB on another machine and remove this file from the COW partition. When next booting from the USB it will reinitialize to an empty password for root, and again at next login it will require the password to be changed.

Clear the password (macOS or Linux):

mount -vL cow /mnt
sudo rm -fv /mnt/rw/etc/shadow
umount -v /mnt