[ale] SCO boot.

Michael B. Trausch mbt at zest.trausch.us
Mon Sep 28 12:33:59 EDT 2009


On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 12:17 -0400, Jeff Lightner wrote:
> 
> At this point I’m just trying to hack the root account to get into the
> box to see what is there.   It boots find from the drives.  If I could
> login to it I could create my own boot/root floppies. 

If you can boot something that will let you view the hard disk directly,
you could search the drive for the block(s) containing the /etc/passwd
file and just modify it directly.  Take care to keep the file the same
length when doing it that way, of course, because unless you're far more
wizardly than most, you'll not be able to update the file's metadata.

So, just delete the root password and pad the record so that its size
does not change, and you can then login.  You'll need nothing more than
a boot floppy that can see the drive itself and a hex editor that
doesn't try to put the whole drive into memory.  hexedit is one such
editor:

  http://rigaux.org/hexedit.html

	--- Mike

-- 
Blog:  http://mike.trausch.us/blog/
Misc. Software:  http://mike.trausch.us/software/

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too
high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving
our mark.” —Michelangelo



More information about the Ale mailing list