I just had the 'root locked out' problem yesterday and today, after installing FreeBSD 9.2 Release, compiling KDE4, and running echo "exec /usr/local/kde4/bin/startkde" > ~/.xinitrc Here is the procedure to remedy this situation: Log into FreeBSD in Single-User mode Type whoami, it should say root Type df -h to determine the root device, in my case, /dev/da0p2 Run fsck, in my case, fsck /dev/da0p2 Run passwd, and reset your root password Mount root as read write, in my case, mount -o rw /dev/da0...