Boot from Net to reset root password

I needed to access my system from console and I did not have any local account. So, the only way I could access is thru root’s account. However, seems like the root password has changed. That is a shame! So, I need to boot the host — T2000 — from DVD/CDROM, mount the root partition of the root disk and clear the root password. I found a copy of cdrom, not a original SUN CD, but the T2000 is not reading it. I guess it–T2000–only reads DVD/CDROM that comes from SUN. There is an explanation for that, but that is outside the scope of this writing. So, having no other DVD around I decided to boot the system from the net in single usermode. To do that I decided to use the Solaris 10 DVD image that is sitting on one of my NetApp server, sitting in the same network, and create a jumpstart partition on a neighbor (same subnet as my T2000) and jump from that. But unfortunately my neighbor system did not have 140G disk space lying around. It probably has few gigs to spare. After doing some research I found out that I could break the whole jumpstart imstallation image in two pieces, a boot server and a install server. The small piece is the boot server that is only about 350MB and needs to reside on a solaris box. I used my neighbor system as the boot server and kept the NetApp server as the install server, since it already has the image of Sol 10.

So here are the steps I followed to achieve my goal

(root)@bootsrvr:~$ mount netapp:/vol/vol2/solaris /mnt/solaris

(root)@bootsrvr:~$ /mnt/solaris/Solaris_10/Tools/setup_install_server -b /jumpstart/boot

It takes about 30 mins or so to finish creating/copying the boot image

(root)@bootsrvr:~$ cd /jumpstart/boot/Solaris_10/Tools

(root)@bootsrvr:~$ ./add_install_client -i client_IP -e client's_ethernet _address -s netapp:/vol/vol2/solaris client_hostname sun4v

sun4v is the platform for T2000. Your platform may be sun4u

I need to share the whole boot partition. So I unshare the very specific partition and share the whole boot environment

(root)@bootsrvr:~$ unshare /jumpstart/boot/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot

(root)@bootsrvr:~$ share -F nfs -o ro,anon=0 /jumpstart/boot

Now T2000 is ready to boot from network

telnet to your T2000’s SP and type break -y to send it to OK prompt. Then to access the OBP type console -y. Now you are ready to boot the host from the net. Type boot net -s and wait about 5 or so minutes before you get dropped to the shell prompt in single user mode. Mount the root partition of the boot disk remove the DES from root’s shadow entry. Then sync twice and then umount the boot parition and reboot the box.

You now can console access to T2000 as root with no password. Please make sure to give your root a new password