Hi, I've just restarted our old sales system after it crashed during our christmas shutdown (first crash in years). I logged in as root and was prompted to change the password, I changed it to the same as our main file server and then decided that was a bad idea so I went into smit and changed it again. I then logged out and tried to get in again, the latest password set in smit, the password the same as the file server and the original password are all rejected. I can login as myself but not as root. This is probably a longshot but are there any microsoft style security vounlarbilites in AIX 4 that will let me gain root access to our system ? Thank Allan

silly question, is your old sales system a trusted host by any connected server that you do have root on?

found this here: http://www.computing.net/unix/wwwboard/forum/5459.html

Thanks Westwood, no it's not a trusted host on any other system, the rest of the network is all windows. Looks like I now need to try and find the CD or preforably boot disks (or maybe download them from somewhere) since the CD drive stood next to it isnt connected. If I boot it from the CD/floppy will I still be able to access the system from a windows terminal emulator ? The terminal for the system died about 5 years ago !

During the cd boot process you will need a console physically connected to the server as telnet will be inoperable.

Thanks for the reply David, unfortunatly that leaves me with a big problem I have no console. Is it possible to setup a boot floppy that will boot the machine and run a script to change the password then shut it down again ?

hm, includes your password any character which could be misstranslatet in your languate enviroment? e.g: German to english : y -> z or special character like /-:,.; ? or HACK it simple steps are: Do you have any cron jobs running which executes shell scripts as root and are this scripts writteble by any other group ? If not, does the directory of such root jobs are Writeble for you ? No RISK no fun Frank