Greetings,

I have recently inherited 3 sun servers from a shop that my parent company closed. One of these servers is an old Ultra 1 running SunOS 5.6 that acts as a NIS server for the other two servers. This NIS server seems to boot OK and function properly as a NIS server. However, I can't seem to log into it unless I boot in Single user mode.

When I boot the machine in "regular" mode, I eventually get a Login Gui "Welcome to Open Windows". When I enter the root username and password, the GUI diappears and I'm left with a gray screen that has a box in the lower left corner that says "console log for auback2" (auback2 being the hostname of the machine). That's it. I've tried telnetting in from one of the other servers but that doesn't work. The telnet session hangs (on the client machine) before I'm prompted for a login.

Is there something obvious I'm missing? If not, any ideas on what I should be looking at to solve this problem?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

SevenFortyOne

It sounds like you logged in successfully but are using OpenWindows vs CDE. At the login screen there should be a dropdown box that lets you change your session to CDE and even start a command line.

It's been a while since I used OpenWindows but you should try the regular mouse buttons and look for a terminal option. Don't forget the center button too

Carl

Thanks for the reply. This thing isn't giving me anything at all on the screen to select or click or even type in. The mouse pointer (the pointer is an X indicating that no actions are possible at this point) moves, but button clicking does nothing. Typing on the keyboard does nothing either.

The machine is definatley using open windows - not CDE. My current suspicion is the the previous owner purposely disabled console and remote login in an attempt to save system rescources or perhaps as a security measure. I just don't know enough about Sun/Solaris to figure it out.

Did you try to change the startup session or go to a command prompt from the startup screen? You should be able to change the startup session to CDE from the startup screen.

Carl

No - I can't do any of that. The login gui I get has no buttons or options or any thing I can change. I get the GUI which prompts me only for a login and password, I then enter those items, the GUI disappears, and that's it. The machine sits there happily being a NIS server but doesn't allow me to do anything with it. I wish I had something that would let me get to a shell but the only thing I can do at this point is hit <stop><a> and boot into single user mode.

I'm used to seeing something like what you are talking about in HP-UX and Linux - but I'm not getting that at all on this old Sun machine. There must be something someplace I can edit prevents OpenWindows from starting and just gives me a console type login. Any idea what that would be? I've been searching the 'net but not having any luck.

You can go to single user mode and remove the /etc/rc2.d/SXXdtlogin script then restart. It should then start up to a login prompt rather than the config script.

Carl