Yes almost all flavors of UNIX have a single user mode, but most still require you to have the root password to get in and do anything.
For example, one of the only ways to root a Solaris machine with out the root password is to use the install disk (of course you can go for buffer overflows, broken software, etc., but I was referring to a generic method). During the install process, just before you format the disks, you can CRTL-c out of the installer. This leaves you with a born shell. From here you can use format to determine the root device name and the slice number of the disk. From here it is simply a matter of mounting the disk, blanking root's password in /etc/passwd, and rebooting.
With HP-UX it is a bit more complicated. They have a command line bios (is that what they are called??? bootloader??? whatever...) like Solaris, that allows you to make changes to how and what you are booting, hardware configurations, and diagnostics. From the tool, it is possible to force the HPUX bootloader to launch HPUX in single usermode, without asking for the root password. But I only know how to do this from the version so of HP-UX I mentioned before.
Garl
-----Original Message-----
From: Jacob Meuser [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 3:29 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [EUG-LUG:2187] Re: HP 9000/300's available
On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 02:18:23PM -0800, Linux Rocks ! wrote:
> Well.... Id say the first thing to do would be to remove root's password :)
Don't most unices have a single-user mode that you can do things like
reset a lost root passwd and such? Is there a boot prompt with
HP-UX?
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