A.P. Lawrence

This article is from a FAQ concerning SCO operating systems. While some of the information may be applicable to any OS, or any Unix or Linux OS, it may be specific to SCO Xenix, Open Desktop or Openserver.

There is lots of Linux, Mac OS X and general Unix info elsewhere on this site: Search this site is the best way to find anything.

Unix, Xenix and ODT General FAQ

How do I reset the root password if I forget it? (part 2)

(For Linux, see http://www.aplawrence.com/Linux/lostlinuxpassword.html)

This is another procedure involving manually editing files, and is specific to SCO Unix 3.2v4.0 through 3.2v4.2. 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.

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