RS/6000 (AIX) password reset - Linux?

[Jules Richardson]

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