RS/6000 7043-140 boot floppies

[Jules Richardson]

On 2/18/19 11:49 AM, Alan Perry via cctech wrote:
> The system does boot the AIX install on one of its hard disks, but this is 
> a recycled system and I don't have usernames/passwords for that install.
> 
> Does anyone here have a suggestion on how to proceed?

If you've got another Unix-a-like (e.g. Linux works fine) machine kicking 
around with SCSI, it's possible to hack up some shell script to 'dd' blocks 
from the AIX machine's drive one by one, looking for stuff that looks like 
part of the password file. Then you can save them, edit them to make the 
data appear like a normal Unix passwd file (IBM being IBM, AIX in those 
days did things a little differently), and run one of the various password 
crackers on the result (e.g. JtR).

That process worked for my 7043-140, anyway. I don't think that the 
filesystem for AIX that old is directly supported on anything, so you can't 
just mount it like I believe you can more modern releases. Of course if you 
have install media, then as someone else mentioned I believe there are ways 
of resetting it that way which are (probably) far easier :-)

cheers

Jules