booting a CD-ROM

[Michael Powell]

gs_stoller at juno.com wrote:

>       I have an old  FreeBSD  system that I haven't used for a long time
>       and I have forgotten the passwords.  This machine has  FreeBSD-4.3 
>       and  FreeBSD-4.7  on it, and also  MS'  Windows98 .  I tried getting
>       onto that system by booting with a  CD-ROM  which started going and
>       gave me the following messages:
>             boot from  ATAPI  CD-ROM
>             CD Loader 1.2
>             Building the boot loader arguments
>             Relocating the loader and the BTX
>       The system then did not output for a liitle over 5 minutes and then
>       typed:
>             Starting the
> and after this I waited for over 5 minutes but the system did not type
> anything else.  Then I tried  booting that  CD-ROM  on another system
> where it booted successfully and the program on it ( FreesBIE version 2)
> ran and I could communicate with it.  I suspect a problem with the  boot
> loader on the first system.
>      Where can I get a new boot loader for that system?    Since I want to
>      get a modern  FreeBSD  (version 9.1 or higher), I expect that will
>      include a new multi-system loader on it that I can use on the old
>      system if I can load just that.  How can I load just the boot loader?
>       Also, what is the structure of the  password  files (is this on the 
>      web  with a per system-version note so if it has been changed over
>      time, I can find those I need) on those systems, and how can I find
>      and clear out the password for  root  so I can get in and set its
>      password and then the other passwords?
>     Thanks in advance for your help.

You did not specify which/what version of FreeBSD CD-ROM you were 
attempting this with. IIRC way back then bootable CDs used a 
floppy-emulation mechanism. If the hardware and its' BIOS is that old 
a modern day boot CD won't work as it is not emulating a floppy disk 
any longer.

Your best bet would be to locate a FreeBSD version 4.7 disk and try 
that. A long time ago there used to be included 2 floppy images that 
could be written out to floppy disks, thus creating bootable floppies. 
In lieu of not being able to boot from CD-ROM if there is a 1.44MB 
floppy drive in the box you may be able to boot off the floppies.

I'm a little rusty with dim memories, but essentially you want to boot 
into single user mode. I think it used to be you'd break into the loader
by hitting the space bar during the the little "twirlie" period when a '/' 
is spinning in the upper left corner of your screen. 

You would need some basic familiarity with vi such as how to do a basic 
edit and then save the file. Essentially what vipw does is open the password 
file using vi as the editor. You could then null out the root password by 
replacing the crypto string in the second field with a * character. When you 
save the file using vi commands and exit you will see a message about the 
password database being updated.

This is actually a FAQ:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/admin.html#FORGOT-ROOT-PW

Note the instructions for mounting / read-write, and the mount -a. The 
vipw lives in /usr/sbin, so /usr needs to be mounted in order to use it.

-Mike