{"id":110,"date":"2008-07-19T10:44:52","date_gmt":"2008-07-19T09:44:52","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-10-26T19:41:24","modified_gmt":"2010-10-26T19:41:24","slug":"iphone-changing-the-root-password","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=110","title":{"rendered":"iPhone: Changing The Root Password"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have just changed the root password on my iPhone from the default (really<\/em> dumb of Apple to give every iPhone the same root password; it would not be much work to set the default root password from the IMEI or something). Before doing so I googled for appropriate instructions.<\/p>\n

Nothing wrong with the technical side of the instructions out there, but none I read made a point of what I would consider basic safety for dealing with changing the root password on a Unix machine. Keep a session open in case things go wrong!<\/p>\n

My own instructions for doing the change went along the lines of :-<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Open two<\/em> terminals<\/li>\n
  2. Create a new password hash with openssl passwd -crypt -salt \"XX\" \"xyzzy\"<\/tt> (obviously change the salt (“XX”) to two characters of your choice, and pick a better password than “xyzzy”!). Keep the output stashed somewhere safe.<\/li>\n
  3. In both terminals ssh to the iPhone (ssh root@iphone<\/tt>).<\/li>\n
  4. Copy the file \/etc\/master.passwd<\/tt> to a safe copy \/etc\/master.passwd.original<\/tt><\/li>\n
  5. Edit \/etc\/master.passwd<\/tt> and put the stashed has into the second field of root’s entry.<\/li>\n
  6. Now exit from the ssh session in one<\/em> window and try to reconnect with the new password.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If things have gone wrong you will have an open session available to fix things (cp \/etc\/master.passwd.original \/etc\/master.passwd<\/tt> would be worth trying) whereas without you are kind of stuck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \nI have just changed the root password on my iPhone from the default (really<\/em> dumb of Apple to give every iPhone the same root password; it would not be much work to set the default root password from the IMEI or something). Before doing so I googled for appropriate instructions.<\/p>\n

    \nNothing wrong with the technical side of the instructions out there, but none I read made a point of what I would consider basic safety for dealing with changing the root password on a Unix machine. Keep a session open in case things go wrong!<\/p>\n

    \n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[599,1336],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it","tag-change-root-password","tag-iphone","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1375,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/1375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}