Get APLawrence.com by RSS(OLDER) <- More Stuff -> (NEWER) (NEWEST)
Home > Unix Articles > Lost Root Password SCO Unix
Printer Friendly Version
Lost Root Password SCO Unix
For Linux, see /Linux/lostlinuxpassword.html
If you have lost your root password on SCO Unix, the following procedures will help you. These MAY help you if you lost the root password on some other OS, but only conceptually: the specific procedure to recover (change, really) the root password will be different.
For Linux, see Linux/lostlinuxpassword.html
How do I reset the root password if I forget it? (part 1)
People do manage to lose their root password. Maybe you inherited the machine, so you never knew it. Maybe you or somebody else accidentally changed it and don't know what you typed. Well, a lost root password is annoying, but hopefully it isn't the end of the world.
This procedure will work for Xenix, and for Unix as well if you are using a very relaxed security level (one which stores encrypted passwords directly in /etc/passwd). If you're using a higher security level on Unix, look for part 2 below.
Boot the system from your emergency boot diskettes (if you didn't make these and keep them up to date, shame on you, but you should be able to use N1/N2 instead, and see the entry on crashing out of these diskettes below).
Lost your N1 disk too? Well, on some versions you'll find an image and a Windows tool to make it on your CD. See Floppy Basics too.
If not, see if How can I download a boot disk? helps.
Next,
mount /dev/hd0root /mnt
; this will mount your hard drive's root filesystem on /mnt.
On some v5.0.x systems, /dev/hd0root won't exist. Create it with
mknod /dev/hd0root b 1 42
Note that if you are using a 5.0.x boot to get at an old 3.2v4.2 disk, hd0root isn't the right device. See SCO 3.2v4.2 root password.
Edit /mnt/etc/passwd. The first line will be your root line, such as
root:encryptedpasswordgoeshere:0:0:God,Everywhere:/:/bin/shEdit out the encrypted password (don't touch anything else!) so that the line reads something like
root::0:0:God,Everywhere:/:/bin/shSave the file and shut down. Reboot from the hard drive. Your root password has now been removed, and you can reset it normally.
Also see /Boot/defs.html#bootfloppy.
[Table of Contents]How do I reset the root password if I forget it? (part 2)
In more recent versions of SCO, you boot directly from the CD, not a floppy. See "How do I crash out of the install script?" below.
This is another procedure involving manually editing files in the event of a lost root password, and is specific to SCO Unix 3.2v4.0 through 3.2v5.0.7 (and maybe 6). The location of the encrypted passwords depends on the security settings. Look in /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, and /tcb/files/auth/r/root; one or more of these will be used depending on how you have security configured. Follow the procedure in part 1 above; instead of editing /etc/passwd, edit the appropriate file(s) from the above list, and delete the encrypted password field. Note that formatting is critical; while you can delete the contents of the field, you must not remove separators, and making seemingly minor errors such as leaving blank lines can cause problems. Save, shut down, and reboot. C2 security will complain about what you've done; to make it happy, run /etc/fixmog. You may also want to run /tcb/bin/integrity and /etc/tcbck.
How do I reset the root password if I forget it? (part 3)
This procedure will work for any variant of SCO Xenix or Unix. As above, boot from your emergency boot diskettes and
mount /dev/hd0root /mnt
to gain access to your hard drive's root filesystem. Now, run
/mnt/bin/chroot /mnt "/mnt/bin/passwd root"
(check the "chroot" man page for more info on how it works). As before, shut down and reboot. It has been reported that on 3.2v4.2 (and possibly others), this must be done in two steps:
/mnt/bin/chroot /mnt "/bin/su root" passwd
If it doesn't work with the quotes, try it without.
If you don't have luck with anything else, consider installing onto a new hard drive and then mounting your original drive as a secondary.
You probably cannot do this with Linux! See http://aplawrence.com/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec1linuxfs.html
See http://aplawrence.com/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec6recoverdrive.html for mounting the original drive as a secondary, then proceed with the instructions above.
How do I crash out of the install script?
(if you don't have a boot disk, see How can I download a boot disk?)
On OpenServer Release 5, boot from the boot diskette, and at the Boot: prompt, type
tools
This is not an undocumented option to the "boot" command, but rather a special line in /etc/default/boot on the installation diskette - so you can't use it from anywhere but your installation boot diskette.
Some later CD's have this also. Se Lost Password OSR5 for an example.
To get to your hard drive, you may need to create the appropriate device node:
mknod /dev/root b 1 42 fsck -ofull /dev/root mount /dev/root /mnt
Mike Pope commented:
What I did was to break out to the shell, run divvy and give the filesystems names. At that point a device node was created and I was able to proceed.
For older SCO Unix/Xenix/ODT releases, wait until the question early in the process that asks you what your keyboard type is. For character-mode installations, this is a regular textual prompt; for ODT, it's a box in a curses-style installation program. How to break out at this point depends on the OS. Under Xenix, press Del. Under Unix, type "shell" and press enter. Under ODT, press Control-A.
If you don't see that on a 3.2v4.2, you'll see:
1. Initial Install 2. Update 3. Exit
and THAT is where you'll type "shell".
On the old systems, you haven't got much until you get the hard drive mounted. No "ls" for example, so "echo /dev/*" is the best you can do. Once the drive is mounted, you can do "/mnt/bin/ls" etc.
Roberto Zini:
See also http://aplawrence.com/cgi-bin/ta.pl?arg=110414
How can I generate and save a debug logfile for an SCO OpenServer 5 installation or upgrade (not strictly related but worth reading :-)
For 5.0.5, use "tools" at boot from CD, and press F8 at the keyboard selection screen.
If this page was useful to you, please click to help others find it: Your +1's can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.
Inexpensive and informative Apple related e-books:
Upgrading to Snow Leopard
Take Control of Spotlight
Sharing Files in Panther (Leopard version also available)
Users &Accounts in Tiger (Leopard version also available)
Back to My Mac
More Articles by Tony Lawrence - Find me on Google+
Have you tried Searching this site?
Unix/Linux/Mac OS X support by phone, email or on-site: Support Rates
This is a Unix/Linux resource website. It contains technical articles about Unix, Linux and general computing related subjects, opinion, news, help files, how-to's, tutorials and more. We appreciate comments and article submissions.
Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.
Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.
We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.
Buy Kerio from a dealer who knows tech: I sell and support
Kerio Connect Mail server, Control, Workspace and Operator licenses and subscription renewals
Click here to add your comments
Tue Jul 12 09:53:41 2005: anonymous
Currently I am facing this problem (lost my root password). I have another server of same unix installation , so I made a bootable floppy from there and tried to boot the other server. It came up to the # prompt. but it is giving one error at the time of booting ie no root disk controller found. Because of that the mount command is not taking. what should I do in this case? I am in deep trouble now. If you can please help me , please send a mail to bindu_joel@yahoo.com
Tue Jul 12 10:20:22 2005: TonyLawrence
You need a kernel on the boot media that has a driver for your disk.
The Supertar's boot media can use btld's: see http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/supertarxfer.html
Thu Sep 21 06:55:48 2006: anonymous
No if your on unix and your problem is the root password simple go to terminal
and it should be:
passwd root
Thu Sep 21 11:38:01 2006: TonyLawrence
Huh?
You'd need to be logged in as an account with privilege to change root's password - and if root is the only user with that priviulege (as it often is), you can't do this.
Sat Jan 27 21:21:04 2007: bruceg2004
I've got a few tips to add to this page;
I had an issue this morning, where something really must have hit our building with something. What? I have no clue. I lost our connection to the Internet, and a drive on our SCO box. The drive is 1 of 3 in a RAID-5, so I set the drive as defunct, and restarted the machine. SCO came up normally, and everything seemed fine.
Then, I went to login with an account that has a UID of 0, like root, and is root, except for some environment variables, pointing to the db, and some additional binaries in the PATH. *BOTH* root, and this 'covroot' account, would not let me login!! I could login as a regular user, but not anything that could do very much, like start the db. So, I came here, and refreshed my memory on how to recover the root password.
Oh, I forgot to mention, my boot floppies, the first set did not work!! I am not surprised, as I have come to not ever trust a floppy disk again. I have had too many go bad. I don't know if it is poor manufacturing, or some external factors which cause them to go bad, but I am serious when I say this, in my experience over the past 7 or 8 years, I have had about 30-40% of them fail on me. So, when I made the SCO boot floppies, I made TWO sets. Sure enough, my first set failed miserably. So, if you are making boot disks, make TWO sets, and TEST THEM BOTH! I did test them both, when I made them 4 or 5 years ago, so it is time to make some fresh ones.
I was able to boot with my second set, and mounted to root disk. Woohoo!! I was getting somewhere. So, I tried to use vi, and it would not let me! I kept getting a terminfo database not found error, so I called Tony. This is where many years of experience comes in handy, folks. Tony quickly suggested using 'ed', but could not find that on the disk, or my mounted root disk, specifying the full path, so Tony came up with a great second idea! Use 'sed' -- Sure, why not? It is an editor, so I just did the search and replace function of 'sed', searching for the string that was in both /mnt/tcb/files/auth/r/root and in /mnt/etc/shadow and made backups of the files as they were first, and then piped the output from 'sed' to a new file, copy it back over the shadow, and root files, and.... .... Pressed the POWER button.
Did anyone catch my mistake? In my glory of being so excited that Tony yet again saved me, by suggesting 'sed', since I had no other editiors at my disposal, I forgot to un-mount the root HD. Time to get that set of floppies ready for another spin in the drive.
So, I did the same thing again, (after waiting for several minutes for the floppies to dump their bits into RAM) and brought the system back up, was able to press enter, when the prompt came up asking to press ctrl-d or enter the root password for maintenance mode, and was in. I ran
/etc/fixmog, logged in as the application user, and started the db, and all was well.
So, in summary, I would say for any SCO admin, should you find yourself in this situation:
1) Make those boot disks, make another set, and test them both. Place in a static proof bag.
2) Don't forget, you can always use 'sed' as an editor. It is not pretty, and can take a while, but it is an editor none the less.
3) Don't forget to unmount the root disk, after you make changes, so the can properly be commited!!
I still have no idea, why just the users with UID of 0 where affected. No clue. Maybe something happened when one of my drives decided it was through living, and wanted to take a little bit or two into the place where HD's that die go, or maybe something else? I dunno. It really is not logical, but this is not the first time I have had to fix a problem, that has no logical explanation. I am sure someone out there that has more experience than me, may be able to offer and explanation.
Thanks again, Tony! This is another reason why I always keep my yearly email support with short phone call support going with Tony. When I first got into this stuff, I used Tony a lot more, and as I have gained experience, I have had to use him less, but when I am in a bind, and somewhere where I have never been, he always comes through. I may have figured out using 'sed' after a few hours of pulling out my hair, but I knew Tony must have been in similar situations a lot more than me, so I decided to call him.
Now, I am here with Verizon, trying to figure out what happened to the T1 line we have.... Sheesh. Not to use a cliche, but "when it rains, it pours".
- Bruce
Sat Jan 27 21:26:43 2007: TonyLawrence
May I suggest putting in a cd-rw or dvd-rw and using Microlite Edge to make boot media on there?
Degrades less.. suffers rough handling better..
Sat Jan 27 21:28:26 2007: TonyLawrence
BTW, normally you'd just do TERM=vt100;export TERM or TERM=ansi;export TERM but that didn't work either - no idea why..
Sat Jan 27 21:34:00 2007: bruceg2004
I'll be making the Microlite CD on Monday :-)
Yea, I forgot to mention that setting the TERM did not work. I tired both, and even echo'ed em after I did my export, but nothing worked. O well.
I am going to have to save the boot CD to an image, since this machine has no burner on it. I would bet that the Edge boot CD will have 'vi' on it, which will make life even easier in the future.
And yes, I immediately took another full system backup, as soon as I could. A Nice, fresh, new DDS-4 tape.
- Bruce
Tue Jul 15 17:02:19 2008: ShaneStewart
The instructions on this page were not appropriate for resetting the root password for SCO 5.0.7. The following is the step by step instructions. I put in an extra space between commands to make the commands more readable. You need to remove the string between the first set of colons on the "root" line.
Boot the system with the emergency boot and root floppies.
mount /dev/hd0root /mnt
cd /mnt/var/opt/K/SCO/Unix/5.0.7Hw/etc
ed shadow
1
c
root:::0:0
w
q
cd /
umount /mnt
Take out the root floppy and reboot your system.
Wed Jul 16 10:32:48 2008: TonyLawrence
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The procedure given just above this comment is specific for that person's machine because of how it was initially set up. On most machines, the files in /tcb WILL need to be edited.
Folks: when you have limited experience, please don't make pronouncements about how something is done.
Wed Jul 16 21:25:54 2008: ShaneStewart
Sorry, I forgot one line to take the "ed" command out of "change" mode in my previous post. There should have been a period on the lines between the new root command and the "w".
And Tony, I'm sooooo sorry that I put the commands specific for SCO 5.0.7 in you r blog, I guess that I should have just left the wrong information from the "expert" alone. Once again, so sorry.
However, I will repost my correction, which was successful on a customer's system today. Discard it if you like.
If the root password is lost, do the following commands to reset the root
password. The encrypted string in /var/opt/K/SCO/Unix/5.0.7Hw/etc/shadow
must be removed.
Boot the system with the emergency boot and root floppies.
mount /dev/hd0root /mnt
cd /mnt/var/opt/K/SCO/Unix/5.0.7Hw/etc
ed shadow
1 (move to line 1)
c (change the line)
root:::0:0 (remove the password)
. (exit change mode)
w (write)
q (quit)
cd /
umount /mnt
Take out the root floppy and reboot your system.
Wed Jul 16 22:06:38 2008: TonyLawrence
Shane, I don't want to give you any grief, but all you are doing is demonstrating your ignorance.
Go back and read Part 2 above.
There's nothing wrong with what you said, but it only covers SOME 5.0.7 systems - in fact, it will NOT apply on most - on most 5.0.0 - 5.0.7 systems you'll need to edit the files in /tcb.
Fri Jul 18 19:30:52 2008: anonymous
Just tried this on a 506 running on a VM. I'm stuck - I get to the <Installation> prompt, but none of the binaries run:
<Installation> /mnt/usr/bin/vi /mnt/etc/passwd
/mnt/usr/bin/vi: not found
and I know good and well that it's there. What am I missing:
Fri Jul 18 20:29:46 2008: TonyLawrence
Going to the shell and mounting /dev/hd0root
Sun Jul 20 03:33:55 2008: nachmanziskind
No, hard disk is mounted (as /dev/root, not /dev/hd0root) and I can see (with echo *; nothing else works) files on it - e.g., data files, which would not be present on an installation disk. Can't fsck, of course,for the same reason I can't vi. Can't chroot, either.
I also tried the symlink location for vi, (var/opt/K/SCO/Unix/*/usr/bin); it's not there.
Sun Jul 20 20:18:05 2008: nachmanziskind
I finally got it. I had to break out of the install disck much later (almost to the point of no return) than I was originally. *Then* the tools get loaded.
Thanks!
Mon Jan 4 18:08:04 2010: John
I am booting SCO 5.0.5 from the Boot Disk, but it automatically runs the installation... I don't want to install, I want to boot to a shell so I can run fsck... how do I do this? I am pressing Enter at the boot: prompt, but there is never an opportunity to login as root, it just says Press <Enter> to being installation. Thanks in adavance.
Mon Jan 4 19:24:47 2010: TonyLawrence
See the "How do I crash out of the install script?" at http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/lost_root_password.html#install_script
I don't remember which part of that applies to 5.0.5; you'll need to experiment.
Mon Jan 4 19:53:05 2010: John
Thanks, per that article I could enter "tools" at the boot: prompt but it still continued with the installation script. I could not break out nor did I see any menu giving options to go to a shell.
Mon Jan 4 20:16:18 2010: TonyLawrence
That's what it is supposed to do -did you read the link that points to http://aplawrence.com/BDD/507cd.html ?
Mon Jan 4 22:39:22 2010: anonymous
Thanks, yes I did read that article but it indicates a menu appears... this menu never appears for me. The difference I see is that I am booting from a 5.0.5 boot disk and not the 5.0.7 CD. Could that be the difference? I don't have a 5.0.7 CD...
Mon Jan 4 22:56:11 2010: TonyLawrence
I don't remember 5.0.5, sorry. Try one of the other methods.
Wed Jan 6 15:59:19 2010: John
Was able to borrow a SCO 5.0.7 CD and boot from it, type "tools" at the boot: prompt, and get to the tools menu, where I chose option 1, "Excecute a shell on ramdisk filesystem". This gave me an <Installation> shell prompt. So far so good.
I am now trying to mount the hard disk and run fsck. The reason for this is when attempting to boot from the hard disk the following error occurs:
WARNING: wd0: Error on fixed disk dev 1/42, block=254044, cmd=0x00000020, status = 0x00005901, sector=2684350, cylinder/head=2673/0
To mount, I tried the command:
mknod /dev/root b 1 42
which appears to succeed, but then:
fsck -ofull /dev/root
returns:
cannot stat filesystem
How can I mount the disk? Thanks for your time and help in advance.
Wed Jan 6 16:09:38 2010: TonyLawrence
You
mount /dev/hd0root /mnt
(that's right up in the article above)
But you don't need or even want to mount a disk to run fsck on it.
More importantly, what you actually need to run first is badtrk - you need that fixed before you can use fsck.
Wed Jan 6 16:22:21 2010: John
mount /dev/hd0root /mnt
returns:
bad address
and attempting to run badtrk on /dev/hd0root gives:
cannot open /dev/hd0root for ioctl
Is there something else I need to do to get the system to recognize the disk? Thanks much...
Wed Jan 6 16:33:50 2010: TonyLawrence
Wrong usage, maybe? It's
badtrk -f /dev/rhd0root
See http://osr507doc.sco.com/en/man/html.ADM/badtrk.ADM.html
Wed Jan 6 16:36:58 2010: John
Yes, that's the same syntax I'm using...
Wed Jan 6 16:58:19 2010: TonyLawrence
OK, then.
All that's left is to install SCO on another drive and then add this as a secondary and see if you can do any more that way. I really don't know why you can't get at this - by any chance is it a system that needs a BTLD? That would give these symptoms.
See http://aplawrence.com/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec6recoverdrive.html for mounting the original drive as a secondary.
Wed Jan 6 19:49:55 2010: John
Good point on the BTLDs... I found that the hard disk is on an Adaptec 2940 SCSI controller so I created a BTLD disk using the SCO 5.0.7 CD and the instructions here:
http://osr507doc.sco.com/en/GetStart/gsgT.createfloppy.html
I was then able to enter at the boot prompt:
tools defbootstr link=alad
And eventually get back to the <Installation> shell.
/dev/hd0root now seems like a valid device but when I try to run the badtrk command:
badtrk -f /dev/hd0root
I now get:
could not get device parameters: Inappropriate I/O control operation
I've read through the badtrk(ADM) document, but can't figure out if there is some other options I should use...?
Wed Jan 6 19:59:10 2010: TonyLawrence
Possibly that's the wrong driver. See if you can "dd if=/dev/hd0root count=1 | hd"
If that fails, you have the wrong driver or it is not configured correctly, etc/
Wed Jan 6 20:05:19 2010: John
I think that dd command works... I get:
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
and some numbers following...
Wed Jan 6 21:37:19 2010: TonyLawrence
Not much more I can tell you. If the dd works, you at least have the right driver, though you may still have a disk geometry issue (see that http://aplawrence.com/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec6recoverdrive.html article for disk geometry issues).
Wed Mar 23 12:55:00 2011: anonymous
I followed you procedure (part 3) on UnixWare 2.1.3 :
dev/dsk/c0b0t0d0s1 is mounted, the chroot command runs good, but when i type passwd root, SCO still asking me the Old Password.
I modified /etc/shadow as described, but i don't find any /tcb directory. Could it be hidden, or in a different slice than /dev/dsk/c0b0t0d0s1 ?
Thanks
Wed Mar 23 13:05:45 2011: TonyLawrence
These procedures don't reference Unixware at all. Unixware does not use tcb, so you aren't looking for those files.
If the password is in /etc/shadow, just edit it out and then reboot.
Don't miss responses! Subscribe to Comments by RSS or by Email
Click here to add your comments
If you want a picture to show with your comment, go get a Gravatar