Tape Reocery issues !!

[Anand Sreenivasan]

This is a weird problem I am having, After the tape restore, I tried login as root through console and It always came back with log in incorect and I found out that having a special character would do that. I went to a single user mode and nulled the password and after rebooting, When I typed root, This is what is happening !! It is not waiting for me to choose an option. I dont know what can be done. Any help is appreciated !!

..
login: login: login: login: login: login:
login:
login: root

Last successful login for root: Tue Jun 1 15:01:54 EST5EDT 2010 on pts/2
Last unsuccessful login for root: Mon Jun 7 20:51:50 EST5EDT 2010 on console
You don't have a password.
Choose a new password.
Changing password for root
Last successful password change for root: NEVER
Last unsuccessful password change for root: Mon Jun 7 20:51:50 2010

Do you want (choose one letter only):
pronounceable passwords generated for you (g)
a string of letters generated (l) ?
to pick your passwords (p) ?

Enter choice here: passwd: illegal choice
Login aborted due to no password.

Wait for login exit: ..

p415-eit [HP Release B.11.00] (see /etc/issue)
Console Login:

[Steven Schweda]

> Enter choice here: [...]

My psychic powers are failing me. What did
you type there?

[Kapil Jha]

you can log in with special character in root passwd by putting a escape sequence "\"

Well your system was trusted or normal.

I suppose reboot in single user mode and reset the passwd again.

BR,
Kapil+

[Anand Sreenivasan]

The issue is it is not waiting for an response and comes out with the said error back to the log in prompt and the same thing is happeniong i n Single user mode when I issue passwd command. What else can I try ? Thanks for any help !!!