Getting to root when the password has been lost

[Tin Le]

In article <24411 at adm.BRL.MIL> SCEF0003%WSUVM1.BITNET at 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?

Since it's on an 386 system, I assume you can boot MSDOS.  I've had it
happened to me where the passwd file got erased (Microport V/286) but
the file systems were fine.

The fix is to boot DOS, run a sector/disk edior like Norton, search
for /etc.  It's should be easier for you to fix things as your passwd
file is still there.  Search for that file, by looking for

	"root:"     without the quotes

Then erase the encoded password by retyping that line, moving all other
information from the right side over.  That's all there is to it.

In my case, I was lucky enough to have an old password file laying
around call /etc/opasswd.

Good luck!

-- Tin Le

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