It seems that if you’re lucky and buy 2nd hand computer equipment from you local goverment, you may get more than you bargained for:
Early last week eighteen IBM RS/6000 E20 servers went up for sale at an government auction for ~$20 AUD a server, anyway after a couple days they were delivered and I began the daunting task of certifying all of the hardware in the servers.
When the first server was turned on, it booted all the way to the standard AIX login prompt. It was later discovered that the root (master account) password was indeed set to root.
This sort of thing happens all of the time – so often that I have started to turn a blind eye and ignore it when it happens. What sets this occurrence apart from the rest is that every single server – all eighteen of them booted up into the operating system and contained data, some of the servers even came with mksysb (system) backup tapes in the drives.
Keep in mind that these servers came from the State Transit Authority of NSW, how is it possible and acceptable in this day of age that governmental servers be decommissioned and sold without wiping the contents of the drives?
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