Date: Wed, 2 Aug 1995 17:30:44 GMT From: AAU System Operator <sysop@aau.org> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: lost root password... please help Message-ID: <m0sdhiF-000CPsC@kudu.ru.ac.za>
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Dear Friends at FreeBSD.ORG:
We have been running a DOS-based UUCP facility (UUPC/extended) for dial-
up e-mail access for a year and a half now, and are all set to upgrade to
a full FreeBSD Unix based system in the next week.
Unfortunately for us (and me, especially) after receiving much help from
some friends in South Africa in setting up FreeBSD 2.0.5, and almost
getting set to link the FreeBSD server on the same ethernet to our NetWare
3.12 fileserver, I forgot my ROOT user password! Very silly of me, at
least I should have written it down somewhere, but I thought I knew it so
off-hand. But I think I forgot because I have been working lately on
setting up the Mercury SMTP mail transport system on the Novell server
(where I have a different Supervisor's passwd) and have not come near the
FreeBSD server for a couple of days now.
Now I need to make some changes on certain crucial files (accessible only
to root) on the BSD to make Mercury recognize and pass mail to it from the
Novell server and, poor me, I cannot remember my password anymore!!!
Please help. I am a novice on Unix and this is my first time at working
at it, but I am ambitious and have some excellent O'reilly books to get me
off to a good start, so I'll be happy to try any instruction you may have
for me.
Following is a clip from my /etc/passwd. I hear that there are special
programs than could parse such info and try to get the actual passwd
from them:
root:*:0:0:Charlie &:/root:/bin/csh
toor:*:0:0:Bourne-again Superuser:/root:
daemon:*:1:31:Owner of many system processes:/root:
operator:*:2:20:System &:/usr/guest/operator:/bin/csh
bin:*:3:7:Binaries Commands & Source,,,:/:/nonexistent
.
.
.
jbp:*:1000:20:John Bart-Plange:/usr/home/jbp:/bin/csh
jbp is my personal user account on the system and along with another user
account: sysop, I am able to log into the system using passwd Jebby123
from both of these accounts.
And you know what, friends? I have a deadline to finish this setup by
next Monday, August 7! There is an important upcoming meeting of the AAU
(pls. see my signature), and there is going to be a demo for the VCs, and
I daren't fail!
Thank you all very much indeed for any help that you can offer.
Best regards,
John
PS: How wonderful it would be if I could hear from you by tomorrow,
Thursday, August 3! Not trying to be pushy, but I am in a fix!
Yeah, also is a way by which I could boot FreeBSD from floppy as a single
user and access the system from there? Ie. mount the HD onto a directory
and do some funny things from there? Anyway, please help
--
John Bart-Plange Email: sysop@aau.org
Network System Operator Tel.: (233-21) 774495
Association of African Universities Fax.: (233-21) 774821
P.O. Box 5744, Accra-North, GHANA Tlx.: 2284 ADUA GH
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