UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I accidentally assigned a password to the root user on this system and I don't remember what it was.. I was messing around with commands trying to learn the OS.

I have an old Indy R5000 system and I do not have a working cd drive for it to run the irix installation.

I booted into the PROM monitor which has a version sash shell and I have been attempting to access the harddrive thus this to copy my original passwd file back to etc/passwd but when i use the cp command to copy the file over I get and IO error.

I have been using the commands:
boot -f dksc(0,1,8)sash
to boot sash from the system partition

then once sash isloaded I get access to the os load partition

The version of sash is 6.2 ARCS.

Is there a way to do a sucessful file copy thru this?

According to this web page, you should be able to copy (although it's not recommended).

Everything else I found mentions using the cdrom drive except one that said to pull the drive, put it into another IRIX system, mount it and edit the /newmount/etc/passwd file (where newmount is where you actually mounted it).

Of course, you probably don't have another IRIX system - in which case, you are back to square one.

Thanks RTM,
You are right this is the only irix system I have...

I cannot seem to find any information telling me why the cp command would give me an io error, all the sites I have looked at says cp should work fine on the drive.

I can read the files correctly but then I want to copy to a file I get

xfs: cannot open file for writing
canot open: scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(0)/etc/passwd

but I can cat that same file to the screen..

I have tried adding BOOTMNT=RW to the env but that made no difference.. unless I am doing it wrong

Here is something to try.

Hmmm...

I have tried loading in single user mode as the site suggests, but when I do that it asks me to give the root password for single user mode..

I can login as guest and demo but I cannot do anything in those user modes

oops looks like I may have fubared the system!

IDE Boot failed.
scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(6)/stand/ide: media not loaded.


for some reason I tried copying the sash shell to dksc(0,1,0) and it actually worked! then right after it no longer acknowledged the exsistance of that drive..

the exact comand I used was..

cp -b 32k dksc(0,1,8)/sash dksc(0,1,0)

that wouldn;t replace the whole drive would it? Should I have specidied a file and path in the destination?

RTM's link says that it works for raw disks. My guess is that the syntax you used did indeed do just that.