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logon or hack for an old pc running SCO Openserver?

PostPosted: Fri Feb 07, 2014 6:12 pm
by PhoneMan
Got an old (90's era) desktop today, SCSI drive, tape drive, the works. Apparently it has SCO Openserver 5 on it. I know nothing of what this is or is used for, obviously it's Unix.
Any hope of getting into it or am I better off trashing it? tried admin/admin admin/password root/root etc, no luck.

Also have another old PC from the same place, it won't boot without a keyboard, and it takes the XT connector, I need to find my adapter and see what it has on it too.

Re: logon or hack for an old pc running SCO Openserver?

PostPosted: Fri Feb 07, 2014 6:56 pm
by xeo
Slave the hard drive in another PC and see whats on it?

Re: logon or hack for an old pc running SCO Openserver?

PostPosted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 7:20 pm
by overWeight
You may also be able to boot the server into Single User Mode from the boot loader, then you will have full root access but it will not ask you for the root password. You can then update the root password to whatever. I'm not sure exactly what is required to get single user mode from an SCO box, so you will have to do some searches. Slaving the drive may be just as easy...

Re: logon or hack for an old pc running SCO Openserver?

PostPosted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 11:39 pm
by Josephus
xeo wrote:Slave the hard drive in another PC and see whats on it?


That is what I would do. Then again, it is an old SCSI. Those aren't the most compatible thing around.

overWeight wrote:You may also be able to boot the server into Single User Mode from the boot loader, then you will have full root access but it will not ask you for the root password. You can then update the root password to whatever. I'm not sure exactly what is required to get single user mode from an SCO box, so you will have to do some searches. Slaving the drive may be just as easy...


Ancient websites say press spacebar at splashscreen. Type
initstate=1
go

as arbitrary as that sounds. Though the process changes significantly from version to version. Others say just hit ctrl+P during boot to get a prompt.

The way of resetting root without single user mode available (unlikely) is along a couple paths. I don't know how technical you are so I'll just give a moderate detail overview. First boot the machine with a livecd.

Mount the drive, probably the first volume of the SCSI
mount /dev/dsk/sda1 /somewhere

then edit out the password on the shadowfile
vi /somewhere/etc/shadow
i

root:deletethesecondfield::::::
:wq


Another technique I have heard of but not used is to mount the offending filesystem as your root, then use passwd as normal. Theory goes that passwd does not care that it is theoretically a different system, it is just editing files in the same location on your behalf.

Of course you could remove the password within x or windows too in order to keep the system fully usable. My guess based on the age, the tape drive, and that they kept it around so long is that it has something once important on it like a sales database or something. Possibly proprietary, thus the tenure of the old beast. It might not be able to be accessed properly without actually running the old software.

Re: logon or hack for an old pc running SCO Openserver?

PostPosted: Mon Jun 29, 2015 5:12 pm
by hintss
I'm having a similar problem, we have a really old box running SCO, and the original owner who donated it to us has since died, so we can't ask them for the login.

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Re: logon or hack for an old pc running SCO Openserver?

PostPosted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 10:16 pm
by entropy
It is also worth a try just guessing. Username "root", password whatever. I had just barely entered into this world when those machines were around, but from what I remember of that decade, people didn't always choose the best passwords. Remember, this thing was probably never on the Internet. The most common password of the era was nothing: type "root" for user name and just hit enter for the password. Other common ones were "root", "password", "help", "test", and any word that you see displayed on the screen once it boots.

If you want to mount the drive on your PC, you could get a SCSI to USB adapter from ebay. It looks like those run $100 or up. But it looks like mounting a SCO disk in Linux can be a hassle (and probably not even possible in Windows), and who knows if Linux supports the USB to SCSI device.

I'd say try to get single user mode going, as Josephus suggested. From there you can reset the password, or pull the encrypted password from /etc/passwd and feed it to a cracker, if you're curious.

Re: logon or hack for an old pc running SCO Openserver?

PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 9:41 am
by ith
Boot into single-user mode, reset the root password, reboot, login. Done.

Here is the steps from the manual:
  Code:
Single-user mode

Use system maintenance mode only if you must do system maintenance work that requires all other users to be off the system, including checking filesystems, installing updates or new software, and reinstalling system files or packages. Note that many system services (like printing and networking) will not function because the various daemons and startup programs in /etc/rc are not executed. Single-user mode effectively halts the startup process until you exit using <Ctrl>D, when the process continues with setting the system time. While in single-user mode, the superuser prompt ``#'' is displayed.


Here is a link: http://osr507doc.sco.com/en/HANDBOOK/sstT.choosemode.html

Hope it helps. If not, lets talk - I have a lot of experience with older unix and unix based systems. I collect old hardware and working systems as well, so have lots of old working parts.