Lost Root Password

[yoda_man]

We have a FreeBSD 8 system that was built by someone else who has now left. He set up a root password as well as locked the boot loader so we can not boot into single user mode nor can we access the system since we do not know the root password.

We can boot off a CD and get into fixit but the drives are set up as a UFS mirror. How can I mount the UFS mirror from fixit so that I can change the root password?

Thanks!

 

[jrm@]

He ... locked the boot loader

Do you mean he put in a BIOS password? If so, I've gotten around those by popping the battery out of the motherboard.

EDIT: You probably mean something else since you can boot off a CD. Maybe mounting something similar to /dev/mirror/gm0s1a? You'll also have to # kldload geom_mirror. I haven't done this in a while so I'm probably forgetting something.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/geom-mirror.html might also be useful.

 

[SirDice]

Do you mean he put in a bios password?

You can password protect the loader(8). See loader.conf(5)

And you can set the console to "insecure" in /etc/ttys.

But yes, load geom_mirror. Mount the filesystem and edit /boot/loader.conf to remove the password and/or edit /etc/ttys and set console back to "secure".

After that you should be able to boot to single user mode.

 

[yoda_man]

Thanks for the reply!

He passworded the loader.conf. So when I boot to single-user mode it prompts for a password. I'll see what I can do once I boot to fixit and load the geom_mirror.

Thanks again.

 

[SirDice]

So when I boot to single user mode it prompts for a password.

That's most likely the edit done in /etc/ttys.

A loader password would be asked just before the loader menu.

 

[yoda_man]

Thank you SirDice, that is what it was!

For anyone else this is what I did.

1) boot to CD and select 'repair'
2) select 'repair with CD, Floppy, or USB' (I select CD since that is what I was booting with)
3) once the fixit loads type
kldload /mnt2/boot/kernel/geom_mirror.ko
4) fsck_ufs /dev/mirror/(mirror id)
5) mount /dev/mirror/(mirror id) /mnt

Thanks