So, I have an interesting problem. The root password on one of our Sun x4500 machines was changed and never communicated. Now, nobody knows what it is. I have physical access to the machine, but no Solaris installation disc. Is there any way to reset the password, this way?
5 Answers
Any linux/bsd distribution which can mount your drive filesystem should have the same capability.
A FreeBSD liveCD would likely be your best candidate in the absence of the Solaris media. (BSDs support UFS.)
Good luck!
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Another alternative is the OpenIndiana LiveCD. Since it's an Illumos (Solaris) kernel it also has ZFS/UFS support just like FreeBSD.– notpeterNov 13, 2012 at 16:58
Here is a step-by-step guide to resetting the root password on Solaris 10, it requires you have the Solaris 10 installation disc, and physical access to the machine though.
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I have physical access to the machine, but no Solaris disc. Know any other way? May 13, 2009 at 23:40
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1
Use the OpenSolaris Live CD: http://www.opensolaris.com/
Boot the Live CD and mount your partition...then clear out the password in the shadow file.
This will work if you're using UFS or ZFS root.
The one time I've had to do this without physical or console access, I managed to find a privilege escalation exploit that applied to my OS and patchlevel and got a root shell that way. Might be a long-shot, but otherwise I'd take a look at http://www.sysresccd.org/, since it appears to support ufs.
You can boot selecting the single user mode in GRUB and then proceding to reset the root password.
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Not in Solaris - single user mode still requires you to enter the root password before allowing root privileges.– alancSep 2, 2012 at 15:48