Access to locked machine

[Jason Ciesicki]

We changed a root password on one of our development HP-UX boxes (10.20), and
now it will not accept the password. I know on my Sun boxes, I can reboot off
the CD, mount the drive, and manually edit the password file.

Can I do this with my HP? And can anyone provide me with some basic steps
here?

Thanks!

[Tammy Rogers_1]

Hi Jason,

Assuming you are not running a Trusted system and you have no other access to
root on the server (like a .rhosts file that won't prompt root for a password
when logging on from another server)

1. You can access /etc/passwd by booting your machine into Single User mode.
Ex. Interrupt the boot process and Interact with ISL.
bo
Do you want to interact with ISL (Y/N) Y
ISL> hpux -is boot

Once you get the command prompt, you will have to
mount your vg00 filesystems.
Ex. vgchange -a y /dev/vg00
mount -a
Then cd into /etc and cp the passwd file to passwd.old.
Edit the passwd file and take out the encrypted passwd
between the first and second colons.
Before Ex. root:passwdwashere:0:3::/:/sbin/sh
After Ex. root::0:3::/:/sbin/sh

Then reboot the server. You should be able to log on
as root without any password.

If you have a trusted system, you will follow the Single User mode
instructions,mount your file systems and run /usr/lbin/tsconvert -r to
unconvert your system.
Then edit the /etc/passwd file to remove encrypted password.Then reconvert your
system /usr/lbin/tsconvert.

[Dave Wherry_1]

I've not done this for a while, but, I believe another
method is to boot to single user as in the previous
post. Then mount all the file systems - mountall
Run sam and go into users and change roots' password
there. This way you do not have to manually modify
/etc/passwd or unconvert from a trusted host.

[Dave Wherry_1]

Jason,
Never mind. Must have been a brain cramp. I was
pretty sure I had done that before. I just tried it
and it wants root's old password. Looks like you
should try the other approach.