IRIX 5.3 and resetting root password

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Mon Jun 28 17:17:41 2004

On Mon, 2004-06-28 at 21:07, Jochen Kunz wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 20:03:39 +0000
> Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > Problem there is that the system disk for which I do have full access
> > is only IRIX 4.0.5 - the 'new' system disk for which I don't have any
> > passwords is IRIX 5.3.
> Suboptimal.
>
> > 1) System is trying to use some authentication other than /etc/passwd
> > and /etc/shadow. What other authentication methods existed for IRIX
> > 5.3?
> NIS / YP? What is configured in /etc/nsswitch.conf?
> Are there any other network services configured? NFS / automount?

There's no nsswitch.conf on this machine, and yp's turned off within the
/etc/config tree.

I'm wondering if it's something within the xdm config that's causing
problems. Certainly Xsession has been localised and tries to pipe xauth
output to a ssh command using a host on the local network from where the
machine came. However I *think* xauth only dictates who can open a
connection to the X server, so the fact I'm getting a graphical login up
on the display implies to be that this step isn't breaking things. I'll
try commenting out the relevant bits and just stick 'xhost +' in there
anyway...

I'm not sure how xdm does its login and whether there's an xdm-specific
option somewhere for using something other than the /etc/passwd file.
Trying to untangle the whole X startup process is making my brain hurt -
think I'll take a break and fight with it a bit more tomorrow :-)

What I really need is a set of xdm config files from a clean IRIX 5.3
install to see how this system differs!

cheers,

Jules
Received on Mon Jun 28 2004 - 17:17:41 BST