How to edit /etc/passwd so root can login without password

[jvm_kvl]

Closing issue, I was able to achieve what I wanted by following this post:

Remove or change the password from a Jetson Nano

FYI, it has been a long time since there was a default name/password. Some time back California law changed, and this instead turned into a first boot account setup. If you were to try to work with any flash software, then you’d want to work with the same release of L4T which the SD card was designed to match. On a host PC you can use “head -n 1 /etc/nv_tegra_release” to see that release. JetPack/SDK Manager is a front end to flash software, and L4T is what actually gets flashed. L4T, in turn, …