problem resetting root password

[rmueller58]

All,

we are on HP/UX 11.00. We had a member of management team leave.. We've not changed the root password since before I started.. I've not had problems resetting user passwords as root, but we have established policies to change system password when an engineer, or manager leaves our employment.

When I attempt to set the "root" password,

It prompts for the old password, I type it in, and I get the following error:

#passwd
Changing password for root
Old password:
Sorry.

Any insight appreciated..

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

1) Make sure the root fs is not full. It hates that.
2) vi /etc/passwd null out the password field. Then quickly issue the passwd command.

Don't do 2 until you have done 1.

SEP

[rmueller58]

Steven,

root file system is 8% of capacity.

/ (/dev/vg00/lvol3 ) : 903634 total allocated Kb
828884 free allocated Kb
74750 used allocated Kb
8 % allocation used

[spex]

Hi,

We just had this question on the forum a couple weeks ago:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1053798

PCS

[rmueller58]

Do I have to change it from the CONSOLE?

[spex · Accepted solution]

Hi,

No, as you're able to log in as root elsewhere, evidently.

Some digging in the thread I provided turns up:

# /usr/sam/lbin/usermod.sam -F -p "" root
# passwd root

as the favored solution.

PCS

[rmueller58]

Thanks SPEX, That did the trick
#/usr/sam/lbin/usermod.sam -F -p "" root
#passwd root

[rmueller58]

thanks all