Changing root password on Solaris 11.3 x86

I’m posting this only because the process has changed a bit since I did it back in the days. Because I’m not using Solaris on SPARC, there’s no STOP-A, boot -s, etc.

Just like back in the days with Solaris 8, you would need to boot with a cdrom or PXE or jumpstart, whatever method you have. Afterwards, you take the shell option. Obviously, you’re not installing the OS.

Solaris 11 uses ZFS, not UFS so you can’t directly mount a partition. You need import a pool instead.

mkdir /b
zpool import -f -R /a rpool
zfs set mountpoint=legacy rpool/ROOT/solaris
mount -F zfs rpool/ROOT/solaris /b
vi /b/etc/shadow

Edit the shadow file

Find your username and remove the password hash

Change your user id
username:whateverthehashis:12345::::::23456
to
username::12345::::::23456

Then we will need to allow empty passwords at login

$ vi /b/etc/default/login
Change the line:
PASSREQ=YES
to
PASSREQ=NO

umount /b
zfs set mountpoint=/ rpool/ROOT/solaris
zpool export rpool
init 6

When the system boots, you should be able to log in as root and just press return for the password. If you’re logging in through SSH, you won’t need to enter a password.

Hope this saved you some time!

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