[H-GEN] debian/sparc lost root password

Joel Michael joel at diggy.com.au
Fri Jun 21 00:23:48 EDT 2002


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On Fri, 2002-06-21 at 14:10, Scott Pullen wrote:
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
> 
> I have asked around the office and then general concensus is that you are 
> screwed ... having said that you, if you have the sun keyboard hit 'stop-a' and then 
> at the prompt type 'boot -s' . this should boot you into single user mode and with a 
> little luck you will not be asked for a password.  You should then have full access 
> to the box.  You may need to mount the various filesystems to access the files 
> that you need,
> 
This is true if you're running Solaris, however the original poster is
running Linux.  Recent versions of Solaris ask for the root password if
you do this anyway.  As Snowy suggested, try the init= trick, if silo
supports it.  It's been a while since I've played with Linux on Sparcs,
so I can't remember if silo supports this or not.. Silo's documentation
will help here.

The other alternative is to boot the installer, get a shell, mount your
root file system, and edit your /etc/shadow and/or /etc/password to have
no password.  Hint:  Sparcs like booting off the network.  RARP and TFTP
are easy to set up.

Cheers!
-- 
Joel Michael			|  Phone:	+61 7 3367 3555
Systems Administrator		|  Fax:		+61 7 3367 3544
WorldHosting.org Pty. Ltd.	|  Mobile:	+61 408 336 728
http://www.worldhosting.org/	|  Email:	joel at diggy.com.au


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