I've just upgraded from 11.04 to 11.10 and luckily I'm still able to login via ssh keys. However, my root password no longer works to gain control of the machine.

I rebooted the machine, went into recovery mode, then chose "remount" to mount the filesystems. Finally I choose "root: Drop to root shell prompt" but it asks me for root password or CTRL D to continue. Thus I cannot get into the the shell to do a passwd change.

How can I bypass it from asking me for my root passwd in recovery mode?