Recovering Passwords in Solaris 11

About once a year, I'll find a way to lock myself out of a Solaris system. Here's how to get out of this scenario. You'll need a Solaris 11 Live CD or Live USB stick.

• Boot up from the Live CD/USB
• Select the 'Text Console' option from the GRUB menu
• Login to the solaris console using the username/password of jack/jack
• Switch to root

$ sudo supassword jack

Mount the solaris boot environment in a temporary directory

# beadm mount solaris /a

Edit the shadow file

# vi /a/etc/shadow

Find your username and remove the password hash

Convert
username:iEwei23SamPleHashonf0981:15746::::::17216to
username::15746::::::17216

Allow empty passwords at login

$ vi /a/etc/default/loginSwitch this line
PASSREQ=YESto
PASSREQ=NO

Update the boot archive

# bootadm update-archive -R /a

Reboot and remove the Live CD/USB from system

# reboot

If prompted for a password, hit return since this has now been blanked.