[chaneln]

Hi all,

First of all, I want to say thanks in advance for everything and anything.
Please shed some lights even if it's not related directly to my problem.

Someone got on to my vioserver, switch rshell to AIX (oem_setup_env) and overwritten the password file without the knowledge of "padmin" account.
This vioserver is set up to host 4 AIX partitions, 1 linux partition and one LPAR is running as NIM server and I do not want to do the mapping and set everything up again.

So I tried to boot from an AIX5.3 CD and choose the option "access this volume group and start a shell" hoping that I can just do "passwd padmin" and call it a day...

However, I got errors "usage getlvodm" and of course it can't find "/" or "/usr" filesystems. I tried to do manual "mount / /tmp" and it seemed to be successfully mount, no error.

But after I cd /tmp/usr/bin, I can't even get "ls" or "vi" or any basic command to work. It keep complaint /usr/bin/ksh: not found. I can't even switch shell and it seemed to be running sh shell.

My 3 questions are

1. Should I suppose to boot with VIOS DVD-ROM or AIX DVD-ROM, if yes what went wrong with the mount?
2. Is there another way (or editor) that I can try to see if I can open /etc/passwd and add padmin account back in?
3. Would booting off of Linux bootable CD work if somehow booting from AIX CD confused and somehow mounting is off?

Any helps is hugely appreciated.
Thanks much.

[mshulman1980]

I've never had to recover a password on VIO, so I can't say that this will ever work. If possible, call IBM support, as this could be very wrong.
Try booting off of the VIO CD and follow the following procedure.
You may need to recreate the /etc/passwd file
pSeries and AIX Information Center
pSeries and AIX Information Center
You might also want to consider importing the passwd file from another system...
1.102: How do I import an /etc/passwd or /etc/group file from another box?
Also, you might want to consider disabling direct root login onto the VIO servers, as the environment tends to be weird