SUMMARY: root passwd recovery on Disk Suite mounted /

From: Matthew Hall <mhall_at_nms.fnc.fujitsu.com>
Date: Fri Jun 15 2001 - 18:10:30 EDT
Thanks to all for the help, and any others I missed: 

jlick@suntp.Taiwan.Sun.COM
Michael.Connolly@itt.com
FGF013C@motorola.com
auto209728@hushmail.com
nate@wired.com
syd@verne.myxa.com
wyodlows@andromeda.rutgers.edu
kdc@rochester.rr.com
henrik.mortensen@csfb.com
ckalle@nms.fnc.fujitsu.com

Booting to single user mode from the CD, I examined the
/etc/lvm/md.conf file - it told me that d1 (the root /) 
was made up of c0t0d0s0 and c0t8d0s0. I couldn't run any
DiskSuite commands from the machine itself, because I had 
0 logins to this box.

Now I had two choices - either break the mirror by editing
the boot disk etc/vfstab and etc/system to not use 
DiskSuite anymore, and editing the password file on it
to reflect the new root password, or,

Edit both mirrors to reflect the same changes, thereby
making them in sync with the changes I needed.

I took the latter method, since it seemed simpler and
more straight-forward.

ok boot cdrom -s
# mount -F ufs -o rw /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /mnt
edit shadow and blank out password
# umount /mnt
# mount -F ufs -o rw /dev/dsk/c0t8d0s0 /mnt
edit shadow and blank out password
# umount /mnt

Then we reboot, and log in to our newly acquired system.
There soon will be a new policy in place that every machine
sent back to us must come with its root password[1]. :)

Thanks again,


[1] Not that anyone will follow said policy ... sigh. :)

> On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, Matthew Hall wrote:
> > We just received a piece of equipment in from one of our
> > outer offices, a E250 with 6 internal disks. Of course,
> > no one bothered to send along the root password with it.
> > 
> > Booting from a cdrom into single user mode, I was able
> > to mount a partition that appeared to be the /, and
> > looking at the vfstab there, it appears that / is being
> > mounted from /dev/md/dsk/d1 ... any changes I make to
> > this password file 'disappear' on the reboot. I have
> > verified that I am mounting this partition rw. Some of
> > my changes do stick (like removal of defaultdomain file).
> > 
> > It was at this point that I realized I was probably 
> > messing with something I didn't fully understand and
> > should probably ask for some help. :-)
> > 
> > This is a Solaris 8 system, 108528-06. 
> > 
> > Will summarize, 
> > 
> > thanks,
> > 
> > -- 
> > MaTThew Hall                    | Life isn't fair.
> > mhall@nms.fnc.fujitsu.com       | But the root password helps.
> > System Test/Product Support/MIS | 
> > 408-895-1572                    | I speak for myself.
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > sunmanagers mailing list
> > sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
> > http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers
> > 
> 
> ---- James Lick ---- jlick_at_sun.com ---- http://jingoro.corp.sun.com/ ----
> 

-- 
MaTThew Hall                    | Life isn't fair.
mhall@nms.fnc.fujitsu.com       | But the root password helps.
System Test/Product Support/MIS | 
408-895-1572                    | I speak for myself.
Received on Fri Jun 15 23:10:30 2001

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