Thanks to everyone for replying, what ended up working was:

boot 3/rz2/netbsd -s

at the ">>" prompt (thanks Greg!)  but from here i don't have alot of things
i should have like man, ftp, things like that. /usr is empty, and i'm
guessing that's a "Bad Thing" ;) anyway, how do i mount /usr?

thanks again,
brad

>If you just removed the entry from master.passwd, you need to rebuild
>the password database with a command like:
>
> pwd_mkdb -p /etc/master.passwd
>
>/usr will of course need to be mounted for this...
>
>- ad
>
>David Brownlee wrote:
>>
>>         Can you recall what you have changed/installed (even in general
>>         terms) since you last positively know you were able to login as
>>         root.
>>
>>         Can you login as a normal user and 'su'.
>>
>>         Can you boot into single user and see if the 'root' line in
>>         /etc/master.passwd starts 'root::'?
>>
>>                 David/absolute
>>
>>                       Neighbours should be one of:
>>                 a) Understanding   b) Distant   c) Deaf
>>
>> On Tue, 1 Jun 1999, Brad Henry wrote:
>>
>> > Hey Andy, thanks for the warning about HTML email, i normally set up
the
>> > client to use plain text, this time i guess i didn't :)
>> >
>> > sorry, i might not have been clear about this, but the problem isn't
with
>> > logging in from remote, it's when i try to log in directly on the
terminal.
>> > Any ideas?
>> >
>> > thanks,
>> > brad
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: Andy Doran <ad@fionn.sports.gov.uk>
>> > To: Brad <bnh@dimension6.com>
>> > Cc: <port-pmax@netbsd.org>
>> > Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 1999 2:40 AM
>> > Subject: Re: root account inaccessable
>> > >
>> > > > Brad wrote:
>> > > >
>> > > > Hello, ihave a DECstation 5000/120 that I bought from my
University.
>> > > > it came installed with netBSD 1.3.1, and just the root account
setup
>> > > > with no password. I've been playing with it for awhile, nd now that
>> > > > i've tried setting it up on my network, (a cablemodem, linux box
and a
>> > > > windows box) when i try to login as root it asks me for a password,
>> > > > which i've never set. does anyone know how i can get past this or
>> > > > possibly netboot using the linux box so i can do a network install
of
>> > > > netBSD to clear this up?
>> > >
>> > > [...]
>> > >
>> > > > May 30 16:57:36 netmachine /netbsd: scc0,1: silo overflow
>> > > >
>> > > > does anyone know what this is and is it possibly related?
>> > >
>> > > Upgrading to 1.4 may help, I don't know...
>> > >
>> > > - ad
>> > >
>> >
>