There is every little chance that one loses or rather forgets the root password of his Sun Solaris servers. In the event, this happens, there is a way out of it. Well the way is to reset the password as there is no way to recover it
Ofcourse, it is recommeded that the security for the physical access to the server is restricted so as to ensure that there is no unauthorized access and anyone who follows this routine is an authorized personnel.
Boot the server with a Sun Solaris Operating System CD (I'm using a Solaris 10 CD but doesn't matter really) or a network boot with a JumpStart server from the OBP OK prompt.
OK boot cdrom -s
or
OK boot net -s
This will boot the server from the CD or Jumpstart server and launch a single user mode (No Password).
Mount the root file system (assume /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 here) onto /a
# mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /a
NOTE: /a is a temporary mount point that is available when you boot from CD or a JumpStart server
Now, with the root file system mounted on /a. All you need to do is to edit the shadow file and remove the encrypted password for root.
# vi /a/etc/shadow
Now, exit the mounted filesysten, unmount the root filesystem and reboot the system to single-user mode booting of the disk.
# cd /
# umount /a
# init s
This should boot of the disk and take you to the single-user mode. Press enter at the prompt to enter a password for root.
This should allow you to login to the system. Once in, set the password and change to multi-user mode.
NOTE: Single-User mode is only to ensure that the root user without password is not exposed to others if started in multi-user mode before being set with a new password.
# passwd root
# reboot
