blackman@hodgkin.med.upenn.edu (David Blackman) (12/01/89)
I have acquired an AT&T 3B2/400. The system administrator for the machine has left town. My problem is that I don't know the firmware password and don't have a floppy key. I do have root access on the machine. Is there any way to discover or set the firmware password without a floppy key? Also: I benchmarked the machine using version 2 of the dhrystone benchmarks and a c compiler called fpcc. I got terrible results - roughly 700 dhrystones/sec (yes i even measured the time with a stopwatch). Is this normal? Thanks, David blackman@hodgkin.med.upenn.edu
root@nebulus (Dennis S. Breckenridge) (12/02/89)
blackman@hodgkin.med.upenn.edu (David Blackman) writes: >machine. Is there any way to discover or set the firmware password >without a floppy key? I have heard this story too many times. Pay the System Administrator more money! :-) To break into the 3B2 open the covers and look in the lower right corner for a battery. Follow the wires back to the main circuit board and disconnect the plug (for about 5 or so minutes). This will cause a NVRAM powerfailure forcing the password to revert to "mcp" as well as reseting the clock and a couple of other things. The system, when powered back up will report a NVRAM Sanity Failure. This is a good sign. When the machine finishes the diagnostics (DIAGNOSTICS PASSED) reach around the back just to the right and up from the power cord and press the reset button. Some 3B2's actually had a button but the newer ones just have a hole to stick a paper clip or small screwdriver into. The system will report: SYSTEM FAILURE: consult your system administation guide. You can consult the guide but it will prove to be useless, there is no information on how to get out of this mess. Insert a write enabled Disk ONE of N (Unix boot disk) into the floppy drive and type "mcp" on the console. If all is well the system will prompt you for a device to boot from. Tell it the floppy disk. It will then prompt for name of program to boot. Type "/unix". After what seems to be several weeks you will be greated by a menu. At the menu's prompt type "magic mode" and the system will respond with "POOF!" This is a good sign. Now look at the choices for the menu picks and you will discover that you now have a "shell" choice. Respond with "shell" and low and behold a super user shell will appear. You have successfully booted a single user version of unix from the floppy. There are a limited selection of commands here so things like "ls -l" won't buy you much. Follow the steps exactly as listed: # fsck -y /dev/rdsk/c1d0s0 - fsck responds with all the blah blah # mkdir /mnt # mount /dev/dsk/c1d0s0 /mnt # cat /mnt/etc/passwd > /mnt/etc/opasswd # cat > /mnt/etc/passwd - you will not get a prompt now! root::0:1::/: ^d - thats a control-d # - if you messed up repeat the cat command # cat /mnt/etc/opasswd >> /mnt/etc/passwd # cat /mnt/etc/passwd - just to make sure there are 2 root accounts # cd / # umount /mnt # sync # sync # sync # uadmin 2 0 Reboot the machine and you now have NO root password to deal with. Once the system comes up log in and vi the /etc/passwd file. Delete the first (no passwd) root entry and then save it. Then set a root passwd on the machine. >Also: I benchmarked the machine using version 2 of the dhrystone >benchmarks and a c compiler called fpcc. I got terrible results - >roughly 700 dhrystones/sec (yes i even measured the time with a >stopwatch). Is this normal? 3B2 400's are not the fastest machine on the planet, in fact on a single user test a 386 could blow it away. Where the 3B2 starts to shine is found on a heavy disk intensive application. 386's roll over and die (single ported disks, STUPID "AT" DOS BUS, single ported memory) when more than 4 users go for disk at the same time. The compiler you want to be running is CPLU 4.2. There was a compiler from Greensboro that took advantage of the MAU. Do you have a Math Accelerator Unit? I do not know of the fpcc compiler but the 400 is rated as a 0.9 MIPS machine. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- NAME: Dennis S. Breckenridge UUCP: uunet!tmsoft!nebulus!dennis QTH: Toronto, Canada ELECTROMAGNETIC: 145.03Mhz ve3gss@ve3gss AMPR.ORG: [44.135.88.54] THE RIGHT CHIOCE?: (416) 733-1696 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
darryl@drutx.ATT.COM (JacobsD) (12/07/89)
In article <17493@netnews.upenn.edu> blackman@hodgkin.med.upenn.edu (David Blackman) writes: >I have acquired an AT&T 3B2/400. The system administrator for the >machine has left town. My problem is that I don't know the firmware >password and don't have a floppy key. I do have root access on the >machine. Is there any way to discover or set the firmware password >without a floppy key? The easiest method I know of (if you have root permissions) is to run /etc/crash and type 'nvram fwnvr' at the prompt. If you don't have the root password, you must disconnect the battery on the motherboard, as has been described previously. -- Darryl Jacobs Bell Laboratories, Denver att!drutx!darryl Note: I won't even claim these views as mine.
wfmc@eci.UUCP (Wayne F. M. Clapper) (12/15/89)
In article <4622@drutx.ATT.COM> darryl@drutx.ATT.COM (JacobsD) writes: >In article <17493@netnews.upenn.edu> blackman@hodgkin.med.upenn.edu (David Blackman) writes: >>I have acquired an AT&T 3B2/400. The system administrator for the >>machine has left town. My problem is that I don't know the firmware > >If you don't have the root password, you must disconnect the battery on the >motherboard, as has been described previously. > >-- Don't forget to leave it unplugged for at least 30-45 minutes to drain the memory (DRAM?)