<p>We are working with an oracle database in which the person that set it up is "long gone" and thus do not know the sysdba password, but need it. We have root access to the box (its on linux). Is there any way to recover or change the sys passwords?</p>

[{'answer_id': 52244, 'author': 'Paul Hargreaves', 'author_id': 5330, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/5330', 'pm_score': 6, 'selected': True, 'text': '<p>Have you tried logging into Linux as your installed Oracle user then</p>\n\n<pre><code>sqlplus "/ as sysdba"\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>When you log in you\'ll be able to change your password.</p>\n\n<pre><code>alter user sys identified by &lt;new password&gt;;\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>Good luck :)</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 34349844, 'author': 'Lalit Kumar B', 'author_id': 3989608, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3989608', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>You can connect to the database locally using the combination of environment variables:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>ORACLE_HOME</strong> </li>\n<li><strong>ORACLE_SID</strong> .</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Depending on your <strong>OS</strong>:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Unix/Linux:</strong></p>\n\n<pre><code>export ORACLE_HOME=&lt;oracle_home_directory_till_db_home&gt;\nexport PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin\nexport ORACLE_SID=&lt;your_oracle_sid&gt;\nSQLPLUS / AS SYSDBA\n</code></pre>\n\n<p><strong>Windows</strong></p>\n\n<pre><code>set ORACLE_HOME=&lt;oracle_home_path_till_db_home&gt;\nset PATH=%PATH%||%ORACLE_HOME%\\bin\nset ORACLE_SID=&lt;your_oracle_sid&gt;\nSQLPLUS / AS SYSDBA\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>Once connected, you could then <strong>alter the user</strong> to <strong>modify the password</strong>:</p>\n\n<pre><code>ALTER USER username IDENTIFIED BY password;\n</code></pre>\n'}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/52239', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/673/']