Password reset for ~1998 AIX on RS/6000?

[Tapley, Mark]

On Feb 1, 2018, at 2:32 PM, ethan at 757.org wrote:

>> 	Is there a standard procedure for recovering lost passwords for these systems, or for resetting passwords? I do have physical access to the machine; it’s possible I can find an AIX install disk but it’s *highly* desirable to preserve the contents of the existing hard drive.
> 
> Image the hard drive off to a raw file using a linux host with a SCSI HBA?
> 
> Once that is done, it might be possible to run a hex editor against the hard drive (one that doesn't copy the contents into RAM) and then search for the password file. From there you can copy the des hash and use rainbow tables / wordfiles to crack it or replace it with a known DES hash?
> 
> This is how I used to reset my root password on my Lucent Audix UNIX host.
> 
> YMMV, others might have more insight.

Update, I did locate a CD saying “AIX V4.2.1 for 5765-C34” and this URL:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=isg3T1000366

which may be what I need. I’ll try this ASAP, hopefully tomorrow, and report what happens. 

Thanks, and any more ideas welcome!