SGI Irix username and password reset

vintech

New member
Jan 1, 2022
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Hi, I'm new here and new to SGI computing. I've been collecting computers for about 40 years. I have 2 Indigo Iris computers, 1 Indigo2 Extreme, 1 Indigo2 Impact 10,000 and 1 Indy. My problem is, they're username password protected. Is there a way around this short of a reinstallation of the os?
 

CiaoTime

Public Enemy Number One
Jan 15, 2020
45
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Vancouver, BC, Canada
Yep! There's a pretty handy guide on it here, if you're able to get any of those methods set up.

I've usually done it through the Installation CD method - if you boot an Overlay 1 CD from any IRIX 6.5.x disc, you should be able to access the drive contents from there and remove the root password with vi. Been a few years since I have, so I can't remember the specifics of that, but yeah. I don't recall it being too difficult.
 
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gijoe77

Member
Feb 18, 2019
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another question is are these systems locked down already? sometimes you will find a guests or demos account that does not have a password...

if you can get in, you can possibly get root via an old exploit or brute force the password. 2nd best case is if you have a cdrom unit, use the CD1 method to edit the /etc/passwd (and possibly /etc/shadow file). 3rd and not ideal case is reinstall IRIX on one of the systems, then mount the other harddrives on the system you have root on and reset the password on the mounted drives
 
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vintech

New member
Jan 1, 2022
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Thanks for responding CiaoTime and Gijoe77. I'll try these methods and report back.
 

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