Root Password Recovery - Solaris OS

1) You need to have physical access to the machine's console.

2) Boot the system in single-user mode

Note: In order to make the system boot you should Press the STOP and A keys simultaneously in your keyboard, you can also use an ASCII terminal, send a to halt the operating system, if still running.

* Boot the systems from CD-ROM:
#boot cdrom -s
* Boot the system from the network (if you have a jumpstart server configured, also make
sure the BIOS in your server is configured to allow the server to boot from the network)
#boot net -s

3) Mount the root partition on "/a"
"/a" -> empty mount point that existsat this stage of the installation procedure.
#mount/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /a

If you don't remember the root partition I recommend you to
#ls /tmp/dev/dsk -> verify the partitions availables and test until you find the correct one.

4) Set your terminal type so you can use with out a problem "vi" command in order to edit the /etc/shadow file

/etc/shadow -> in this file the root password is encrypted and you want to eliminate that entry.

#TERM=sun; export TERM
If you are using anascii terminal or terminal emulator on a PC
#TERM=vt100; export TERM

5) Edit and remove the encrypted password entry for root
#vi /a/etc/shadow ->if you have a solaris older version try /etc/passwd, the password should have no entry(::)

6) Umount the "/a" to make the change permanent
#cd;umount /a


7) Reboot in single-user mode
boot -s

8) The root user will not have a password assigned, fell free to give a new one using the "passwd" command.