[comp.unix.questions] Help! wrt: Personal IRIS WkStn.

andyb@tardis.wimsey.bc.ca (Andy Babinszki) (12/25/90)

An aquaintance of mine purchsed a Silicon Graphics Personal IRIS workstation
at an auction.  The machine came with no backups, no installation
tapes/disks, passwords or documentation.  He would like to be able
to use the thing, but cannot even log in.  Does anyone out there know
of a way he can get on and set/reset the userIDs and passwords?  Reply
by e-mail would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Andy.

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Andy Babinszki - andyb@tardis.wimsey.bc.ca

olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson) (12/27/90)

I tried to reply via mail, but it bounced...

In <1CE00001.aeh0mf@tardis.wimsey.bc.ca> andyb@tardis.wimsey.bc.ca (Andy Babinszki) writes:
| An aquaintance of mine purchsed a Silicon Graphics Personal IRIS workstation
| at an auction.  The machine came with no backups, no installation
| tapes/disks, passwords or documentation.  He would like to be able
| to use the thing, but cannot even log in.  Does anyone out there know
| of a way he can get on and set/reset the userIDs and passwords?  Reply
| by e-mail would be appreciated.

Your friend's best bet is to boot the system up in single user mode.
This is done by going to the PROM monitor (by pressing ESC during
boot, then choice #5) by typing to the >> PROM prompt:

boot dksc(0,1)unix initstate=s

Which will bring the system up without /usr mounted directly into
a single user shell.  mount /usr with the command 'mount -c /usr',
which will fsck if needed.

Manuals and software should be available from the local SGI office
for what amounts to just media and overhead costs, at least the stuff
that comes standard with the system.  I won't promise this, since you
have a rather unusual situation, but it is worth trying.  I know we
do have sales offices in Canada, and I'd be surprised if there wasn't
one in Vancouver.

Good Luck,
--

	Dave Olson

Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.