On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 05:21:37PM +0200, bart sikkes wrote:
> hello all,
> 
> this question isn't fully on topic but i had good experience with
> other port- netbsd lists with question concerning related machines, i
> apologize if this is considered to off topic for this list.
> 
> i came into possession of a sparcstation 5 with some goodies (2
> external hdds, external tape streamer, keyboard, mouse, 13w3 to VGA
> adapter). 

Nice setup.

> after hooking it up to a monitor that could handle the signal and
> booting it i ended up in the login screen. as more often with these
> system it once belonged to some company and was passed on a few times,
> so the chances of ever getting to know the password is zero.
>
> im now wondering what to do, one thing im kinda sure about is wanting
> to keep solaris for now (this is pretty much the most off topic part),
> never worked with it and just want to take a look around.
>
> i see two options:
>
> 1) take the hdd out and put in another machine, mount it and edit the
> passwd file (or something like that, whatever solaris uses)
>
> 2) netboot the machine from some other system and then mount the hdd
> and edit the passwd file.

Read the NetBSD diskless (netbooting) how-to:

http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot/

Once you get your boot server set up, you need to stop the booting of
your sparc5 by hitting L1-A or STOP-A, depending on which keyboard you
have.  You'll be dropped to a prompt that should look like:

ok>

From the PROM prompt, type 'boot net' and hit return.

One thing you might try is 'boot -s' to boot the installed OS into
single user mode, the previous owner of the system might have set the
box to not require a root password to enter single user.

If that fails, do the net boot, figure out which disk is the OS disk and
has the root filesystem on it.  Mount it, edit /etc/shadow, null out the
passwd field for root, save it off, unmount, reboot.

To set it to not need the root passwd when coming into single-user mode,
create the file /etc/default/sulogin with a single line:  PASSREQ=NO

Once you've played around with Solaris for a while, install NetBSD and
join us here in this nice little community. =)

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson@bl.org