Password reset for ~1998 AIX on RS/6000?

[ethan at 757.org]

> 	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.