dont you need to be root to even boot into single user mode or the ok prompt???? how do u even do root priveledges on a machine that wont let u in as root???

What about some exploit archive out there

how come no one is responding. the guy is talking about being locked outta root and you guys are suggesting he do something only root can do. i mean, does this make any sense??

well, had a heck of a time getting this fixed, but ended up having to reinstall solaris 2.5.1 altogether, was able to boot off cdrom, mount disk, and save my important stuff on another disk and then unhooked my data disk and reformatted, partitioned the boot disk completely. Works like a charm now. Pain in the butt, glad i had my data on a separate drive. Now tho, i have the same kind of problem on my linux machine, EVERYTHING, but one user, is completely locked out and all is owned by root so I can't do anything with it. linuxconf kept crashing when I was trying to fix another users password so I'm wondering if the shadow file was corrupted, but that doesn't explain why only one user and not root, can get in.

Kymberm,

Gratz on your reinstall and that was very good that you were able to save the OS specific data. Im glad it all worked out for you...

You also got a side benefit of getting a refresher course for an install!!




If you have a CD to boot from you dont need to be root.

Also, to reboot a harsh way is to simply poweroff and on the system again and it will force a reboot, if you dont have the root prompt.

thanks RTM I forgot Solaris requires passwd for single.

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My brain is your brain

Thanks Now however, I'm experiencing a very similar problem on my RH 6.2 Linux machine. Happened about the same time, but linuxconf kept crashing and if i try to edit a users setting, i get segmentation fault errors and can do pretty much nothing! Any hints on why root and all but 2 users can't log in at all?? I can't even su to root. I really don't want to do a reinstall, our data is not as clean on this machine.