[rescue] Bypassing Password Protected NVRAM on SS4

[Kris Kirby]

On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, BSD Bob the old greybeard BSD freak wrote:
> I might be able to pick up a fiver buckeroo SS4 with 64mb ram and probably
> a 1 gig drive.  It might make a nice little additional suntoy.  But, its
> NVRAM has a password set.  Is there a way to clear the NVRAM on an SS4
> via jumper or shorting or somesuch?  I was thinking you could do an
> emergency clear of an NVRAM chip by sorting all pins at once for 2-3
> seconds and no more.  Is there a way to clear it from prom?

I've only been able to try this with SunOS 4.1.[34], so I don't know if it
applies to Solaris. I use a serial console for all of this.

1) Allow the machine to boot normally.
2) Upon seeing the machine detect the hard drives or the machine starts
init, start smacking CTRL-C like a mad monkey with a bad case of caffiene
jitters... The idea is to force fsck to fail and make the machine attempt
to start in single-user mode (as if to repair the filesystem).
3) Once you get a "#" prompt, type "fsck -p" and then "/etc/rc.single"
4) "passwd root"
5) man eeprom

8-) (Four attempts, four sucessful. 3x IPX, 1x IPC.)

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Kris Kirby, KE4AHR          | TGIFreeBSD... 'Nuff said.
<kris at nospam.catonic.net>   | IM: KrisBSD
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"Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony."