[rescue] SunOS 5.5.1 inaccessible

[Colin Prince]

Hi all,

I inherited a Sun SPARCstation along with the job I currently hold, and the 
machine was operating okay for many years, so I hear.

I should tell you all up front that I have very little experience 
administering Unix machines at all let alone the SunOS machine, so I'm 
hoping you all can help point me in the right direction.

I would, in the recent past, telnet in to add users or other minor details 
mostly handled by scripts from persons long gone.

Suddenly, one day when trying to telnet to the box I get the following 
message before the telnet connection closed:

UNIX(r) System V Release 4.0 ([hostname])
ld.so.1: /bin/login: fatal: libpam.so.1: can't open file: errno=2

So, now I cannot access this box remotely. There is a console which is 
still working okay, though I'm now afraid to log out.

Checking in the file system, I find that there is no file 
"/usr/lib/libpam.so.1" (I'm assuming from the man page that this is the 
right path). It would seem odd that this file would exist before and then 
disappear so there may be a question of somebody deleting this file, who 
exactly, I don't know.

Some information on this system:

doing uname -a responds with:

SunOS [hostname] 5.5.1 Generic_103640-06 sun4m sparc SUNW, SPARCStation-10

This machine has no backups and no installation CDs or disks or manuals or 
anything.

We've substituted another machine to do this machine's functions (and the 
new machine now has this machine's IP) and unplugged it from the network 
for now.

So, I'm wondering if anyone would know a way I could get the requisite file 
or stop the login program from asking for it, or indeed any suggestions, 
please.

Thanks very much,
Colin Prince.





Colin Prince
Bold Internet Solutions Ltd.
416 504 1788 extension 231 (fax 416 504 7872)
http://www.boldinternet.com/