So, I got a couple of RS/6000 systems (7043-140's) from another listmember
a while back, which I've finally got around to looking at. Both appear to
be working (one had a bad cache RAM connection, now fixed), although I only
have one drive between the two, which has AIX 4.3.2 installed.
I don't have install media, and I don't know the root password; question
is, can anyone tell me if Linux can mount AIX's filesystem, so that I can
reset it? I'm seeing a whole bunch of conflicting reports about that, in
particular that Linux' idea of JFS is based on that in OS/2, which is a
different animal to that which existed in AIX. (reason for asking rather
than just trying is that I don't actually have a PC-based SCSI board here
with me; I'd have to put the AIX drive in one of my Sun or SGI systems,
snarf raw data into a file via dd and FTP it across to mount it via a
loopback device under Linux - then do the reverse to get the modified image
back onto the disk)
If it comes to it, I can try scanning the raw disk blocks for root's entry
in the passwd file, removing the password (which I assume will just be a
single-character indicator to use a shadow file anyway) and making up the
slack in the comment field - which will hopefully work. But it would be far
easier to just access the file directly.
cheers
Jules