Re: U5 firmware password?

[Eduardo Horvath <eeh%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Tue, 11 Aug 2009, der Mouse wrote:

> I've got a U5 which seems to have a password set in the OBP - a break
> during the memory selftest results in an old-mode prompt
> 
> Type boot , go (continue), or login (command mode)
> > 
> 
> and when I try "login", it wants a "Firmware Password", which of course
> I don't have.  (I got this machine years ago and am only now trying to
> do something useful with it - this is the same U5 I mentioned a few
> weeks ago, which I now have some RAM for - thank you, sr@!)
> 
> Perhaps fortunately, if I disconnect the disk, it tries to netboot.  So
> I pointed it at a 3.1 sparc64 netboot setup, and I have it up
> single-user.  But eeprom says "property `security-mode' not yet
> supported"; I can't set it to none.

The NetBSD eeprom program needs to be enhanced to understand how to handle 
`security-mode'.

> The disk appears to have Solaris on it, so I thought I'd just null out
> its root password and use that.  But when I fsck and mount it from
> NetBSD (3.1, at least, that being what's in the netboot setup) I can't
> seem to write to it; for example, with the Solaris disk on /mnt,
> 
> # cp /mnt/etc/shadow /mnt/etc/SAVE.shadow.SAVE
> cp: /mnt/etc/SAVE.shadow.SAVE: File too large
> 
> even though the file is by no means large.  (This even after fsck
> passed the filesystem.)

The Solaris and NetBSD FFS formats have diverged over the years to the 
point where they are not compatible.

> So, any suggestions?  Am I doing something stupid here?  Does sparc64
> have security-mode support in newer releases?  (I'd rather not go
> through setting it up only to find out it doesn't help.)

Netbooting Solaris and using the eeprom command should work.

Or you can enhance the NetBSD eeprom command.

Or you can netboot a teensy little Forth script or FCode binary that 
does:

" setenv security-mode off" evaluate

Eduardo