SVM recover root

UNIX for Beginners Q & A
1

Hi,, i have a solaris 10 machine , that let the root password expire..
I am trying to recover from failsafe mode.
In the old days it was rater simple , boot to cdrom , mount the root disk,
/a cd /a and wipe out root pw string..

Now i have to try and do it remotely , from failsafe and this has svm.

the first problem is , is that i can not find a disk to mount /dev/dsk/,..... /a

df -h

shows me /ramdisk-root:a mounted on /

echo | format

does not show c0t0d0s0

it has a boot and an altboot,, but neither can be mounted to /a

how can i find the correct disk to mount to /a so that i can remove the encrypted password from the shadow file?

have not done this in a while,,, but it used to be a pretty simple tasks...

thanks

2

Hi,

As you are using SVM, there are a couple of things to be aware of particularly whether the root disk is a single disk or a mirror. Depending on the machine type, the internal disks could be under the control of an internal HW RAID Controller.

Also handy to know if the boot disks are internal or is it booting from SAN.

To identfy some of this stuff I'd start with running a devalias at the ok prompt.

Regards

Gull04

1 Like
3

I have some questions first:

  1. What hardware is this? SPARC or x86? Exact model?
  2. Do you know what the root filesystem device node is? /dev/md/????? or /dev/dsk/?????
  3. Do you know how the RAID1 was configured? Using raidctl command (hardware RAID controller) or meta commands (software RAID, true SVM)?
  4. What filesystem is used, UFS or ZFS ?

Recovery of root password is completely different for a UFS filesystem as opposed to a ZFS filesystem.

2 Likes