UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi there...i am new to the Unix environment. And I been given the task of recovering the SU password on the unix server. As no one here at work knows what the password was, and the only person who knew has left the company and not contactable. Is there any way of recovering this password? And also is root password the same as SU? Does root has the same privileges as SU?

Thanks in advance.

Is root password same as SU password ?
Answer :-- I don't think so..since we can use su <username>


I think you can obtain the password but reset..

Depends on what user you "su" to. If you call "su" without any username, it is root, you want to become. Since you didn't write any username, I guess you lost your root pw. For this it depends which OS you have - best start searching a recovery/maintenance CD/boot to reset your root pw. Google will have a lot on this topic.

What is your OS?
If it is HP-UX, you can recover it w/o CD if you have physical access to the system. Others like Solaris and Linux, you'd need a boot up CD to reset the root password and this is of course assuming you need to reset for root password.

thanks guys for the reply as u can see i am very clueless...so su = root? if that is the case then i already have the password...haha...sounds dangerous huh.

Try to find out what your unix OS is first: type "uname" at the shell prompt, that will give you a clue. From there on you can google more specificly for your OS.