My son has picked up a Sun Sparc workstation which has Debian 3.1 on it. It was from a freecycle mail list but the preson donating it was a bit clueless - he said he worked for an Apple Store but the iMac he was also trying to make work, didn't. That was due to a blank boot CD and a dead hard drive. The Sun works and gets to a login prompt but that's the problem, no userids or passwords as you might expect. As my son doesn't have broadband and so can't easily download a full CD, is there an easy way to recover the machine, perhaps by blowing away a file containing the afore-mentioned userids? If so, what can I do to help him?
On Sun, 2008-09-14 at 23:01 +0100, CDW (Linux) wrote:
My son has picked up a Sun Sparc workstation which has Debian 3.1 on it. It was from a freecycle mail list but the preson donating it was a bit clueless - he said he worked for an Apple Store but the iMac he was also trying to make work, didn't. That was due to a blank boot CD and a dead hard drive. The Sun works and gets to a login prompt but that's the problem, no userids or passwords as you might expect. As my son doesn't have broadband and so can't easily download a full CD, is there an easy way to recover the machine, perhaps by blowing away a file containing the afore-mentioned userids? If so, what can I do to help him?
The standard procedure (which varies a bit between bootloaders and how secure the box was when it was configured..so you will have to google) is to bring the box up in single user mode from the boot prompt..then remount / as rw (mount -o remount,rw /) and then issue a passwd command to change the root password. The situation varies a bit if /etc etc are on different partitions to / but it is /etc you need mounted rw.
Reboot..log in as root and configure/add other users as required.
On Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:01:22 +0100 "CDW (Linux)" cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk allegedly wrote:
My son has picked up a Sun Sparc workstation which has Debian 3.1 on it. It was from a freecycle mail list but the preson donating it was a bit clueless - he said he worked for an Apple Store but the iMac he was also trying to make work, didn't. That was due to a blank boot CD and a dead hard drive. The Sun works and gets to a login prompt but that's the problem, no userids or passwords as you might expect. As my son doesn't have broadband and so can't easily download a full CD, is there an easy way to recover the machine, perhaps by blowing away a file containing the afore-mentioned userids? If so, what can I do to help him?
If you want an ancient Solaris install I have a copy of 2.6 (late 90's vintage) which you can have. I also have a copy of Redhat 5.2 (similar vintage) for SPARC. Of course Debian 3.1 is a little more up to date....
Mick
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CDW (Linux) -
mbm -
Wayne Stallwood