HP-UX

Hi, hope someone could help me here:

Our root account was disabled on our production server this morning and usually we would login at the console to re-enable the account. However we are unable to get a login prompt at the console. The console displays the 8 options along the bottom and a cursor but no login prompt. We are able to login via telnet sessions but not as root.

I have tried holding down the 'd' key while switching the console on and the "Remote Mode" option has a '*' next to it. There is a console getty process running but I am unable to kill this as it is owned as root:

root 2796 1 0 May 25 console 0:00 /usr/sbin/getty console console

Can anyone advise how this can be resolved? Ideally we would like to get the console issue resolved first as we will need root access to shut down the applications running on the machine prior to any rebooting.

We are running HP-UX 11.00 on an L2000.

Thanks.

See the FAQ root password HP-UX section.

This could be a hardware problem with the console hookup. The tty port could be x-offed waiting for an x-on. So type a cntl-q and see if you get any output. Even if the getty is hosed you should be able to talk with the firmware. Type a cntl-B and see if you get a firmware prompt (this will not screw up the running os). If you see the prompt, you know that you don't have a hardware problem. From the firmware prompt, type "co" to go back to console mode. If you can talk to the firmware but not to the getty, you are out of luck. You will need to crash the box.