Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Ever had the need to reset your forgotten "root" password on an AIX server? Ever been frustrated by the lack of
complete information on the subject? Well, stick around and we will walk you through one way (perhaps the best
way) to recover from this problem.
Article Index
• Background
• Assumptions / Requirements
• Procedure
o Prepare the NIM Server
o Shutdown the LPAR
o Boot the LPAR in SWS (Service Mode)
o Boot Single-User Mode from the NIM
o Reset the Password
o Verify the Results
• Conclusion
• Printing
Background
One day, while performing my normal administrative duties on UNIX servers, I found that I could not log into a
server as the "root" user. So, after trying every possible password that we could think of, we found ourselves without
"root" access. Hmmmmmm, I thought, what an unusual problem. Yeah right; in the crazy world of IT, this problem is
more common than you might think. Well, after looking for information on the topic, we found what we needed on
IBM's web site. However, as usual, the article presumed a certain level of knowledge, that fortunately we had. We
realize that not everyone may not always have this knowledge, so once again we will elaborate. We also wanted to
document this procedure for ourselves, in the event we had to perform this quickly in the future. Another good result
of such documentation is that it can be used to train other UNIX systems administrators so that they can react quickly
to this problem.
Assumptions / Requirements
For this article the assumptions might be a bit obvious. We assume that you have solid AIX experience as well as
pSeries LPAR and NIM (Network Installation Management) server experience. Certainly all of this knowledge is
necessary from conceptional standpoint is absolutely necessary.
Technical requirements are as follows:
• Access to the AIX server console. We are using the Web-based System Manager". "Root" access.
• A NIM server with "root" access.
• Web-Based System Manager Remote Client is installed on your workstation.
Now that we have laid the groundwork, let's get going with the actual steps.
Depending on the speed of your network connection, the following could appear for what seems like forever.
Now expand the gui as shown and highlight the server of interest.
Right click on the highlighted server and select Shut Down Partition as shown here.
It seems best to allow the operating system the opportunity to shut down gracefully. Choose Operating System and
click OK to continue.
After a few moments, you should see the following. Notice that the state is "Not Activated". The server is down.
Boot the LPAR in SWS (Service Mode)
Once again right click on the highlighted partition. This time select Activate.
On the following screen we need to click Open a terminal window.... and then click the Advanced button.
Select SMS as our Boot mode and then click OK to continue.
Enter a 3 here for Service Mode Boot, and a carriage return to continue.
One last chance to abort, or enter a 1 to continue.
If withing a few moments, you see a screen like the following, all is well. "Packet Count" is always a good sign when
network booting.
Now, change the password and resync the filesystems. The also reboot. Notice the account we are resetting the
"padmin" account, not "root". This is because the server we are working on is a VIO server, and direct "root" access is
not permitted. All login is performed as "padmin". This is irrelavent and you can feel free to substitute "root".
You should see the system rebooting as shown.
Reboot looks clean; time to proceed. All is well to this point. Almost finished.
We have now thoroughly explained this process, probably more so than anyone else. Hopefully we have solved your
particular problem, but if not please feel free to drop us a line and we will address it as time allows.
If you have trouble printing this article, be sure to set your browser Page Properties correctly. Go to File -> Page
Setup and set your left and right margins to .125 inches.