Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell!pacbell.com!ucsd!nosc!humu!pegasus!pilikia!art
From: art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Getting to root when the password has been lost
Message-ID: <1990Sep08.224315.29994@pilikia.pegasus.com>
Date: 8 Sep 90 22:43:15 GMT
References: <24411@adm.BRL.MIL>
Organization: Pilikia, Honolulu
Lines: 15

In article <24411@adm.BRL.MIL> SCEF0003%WSUVM1.BITNET@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu (James N. Petersen) writes:
>Recently, we had a graduate student leave, after having changed the
>password for root on our UNIX V/3.2.2 system (AT&T UNIX/386).  Is there
>any way we can get in and reset the password to a known value?

If you have a bootable UNIX on diskette, you can boot from your floppy
drive and mount the harddisk on the floppy filesystem.  Then it's easy
to cd onto the harddisk and modify etc/passwd.  You may be able to do
this using your UNIX installation boot disk by breaking out of the 
install with the interrupt (DEL usually) key as soon as the first
question is asked.  I know this is possible with ISC UNIX, which is
AT&T UNIX V/3.2 based.
-- 
Arthur W. Neilson III		| ARPA: art@pilikia.pegasus.com
Bank of Hawaii Tech Support	| UUCP: uunet!ucsd!nosc!pegasus!pilikia!art