Nortel Switch - Password Recovery

Hey Hey,

I very seldom ask questions on here, but I've exhausted all other avenues. I'm looking for the Password Recovery Procedure for a Nortel Switch. I realize you can contact Nortel and they'll either send someone, or possibly give you the procedure, however this costs a great deal of money. In our demo lab, our routers and switches are all open to us. Our choice of Nortel or Cisco, we're free to do what we want. Someone went into one of our Nortels (former lab backbone switch) and changed the password. Our profs have the procedure for the Routers, however not for the Switches and will have to eventually contact Nortel. I can pull of some bonus marks in class if I reset the password. Anyways if anyone can be of help that'd be great. Either in here or in PM it's all good :)

Peace.

I'm sure the method would be similar to the Cisco router or switch. I recently had to do the same with a cisco switch, and found this to work for me, I'm sure that Nortel will have a similar procedure:

First before anything, there won't be a method to do this over the network, to my knowledge, you'll have to log into the console (serial port to the switch or router).

Connect the router/switch via console and make sure you make the connection:

1: Unplug the power to router/switch
2: After a minute a minute or so
3: Plug the power back in, press and hold the power button while the system does it's system check. You should see the system comming up in the console. You'll most likely see all the lights on switch lighting up. When they stop blinking, you should be at the system menu with having been prompted for a password. From this point, you can change the password.

Hope this helps.


--PuRe www.pureescape.net

HRTegz, if you can get me the switch model, I have a friend that might be able to find out for you.


Cheers:

Hey Hey;

PuReExcTacy: Thanks for the advice.. I know the cisco methods as well, but apparently since Nortel used to do a lot of work with the US government, their recovery methods are kept quite secret.

DjM: That'd be amazing.. I'll have to double check which it was... I know we're working with Baystack Business Policy Switch or else a 450... I'm not sure.. I wasn't paying much attention to the lab, we were given an oddball switch to use (neither of the above) and no one had the config information for it. Took an hour just to get the ip address working properly, and that was with a former nortel employee.. heh :)

HTRegz

Give me the model # and I'll try to get it for you...



Disregard my response, just read your response to DjM (long day),
I am currently on account using heavy Nortel...Will respond to you by tomorrow if no one else does sooner...

cheers..

If it's an old 350 or 450 Baystack do the following:

power of,
wait about 30 secs
power on -> you are asked for a password type within 15secs: NetICs
this brings you to enable mode.

Another solution with a 450, place it in a stack with another 450 you have the password for. Stack them and make the 450 you know the passwrod for the master switch. If you have done that reset the complete stack (all switches) to the default settings using the master. This will remove the password you didn't knew, it will however delete the configurations too. But since it's a lab/demo that doesn't matter, right?

Thanks for the info everyone, both here and in the PMs. The lab was completely booked today, so I just pased the information on and as soon as I hear the results, I'll let you all know which method was successful. If nothing so far as worked I'll post the model numbers and so on.

Thanks again.

Hey Hey

Just an update. I tried the NetICs method and it didn't work. So I'm returning once again to the gods of the internet.

It is a Baystack 450-12T Switch... A few people said with the model number they could get the sequence. The model # is AL2012A15

Quote:

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Originally posted here by HTRegz
Hey Hey

Just an update. I tried the NetICs method and it didn't work. So I'm returning once again to the gods of the internet.

It is a Baystack 450-12T Switch... A few people said with the model number they could get the sequence. The model # is AL2012A15

---

Hi HTRegz, I am not ignoring you on this. I sent this information to a buddy of mine on Friday, he hasn't gotten back to me as yet (maybe he's ignoring me :p ), as soon as he does I'll let you know if he came up with anything.

Cheers:

i would recommend that you kill yourself, because you are pretty much screwed for the rest of your life

Quote:

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Originally posted here by KosherLinuxBeef
i would recommend that you kill yourself, because you are pretty much screwed for the rest of your life

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And this comment helps HTRegz......how?

If you got something to add, be my guest, if not, keep the smartass remarks to yourself.


Cheers:

I was wondering if anyone had figured out how to reset a 450-24t running SW 3.1.x. I was given a few of these (Local hospital upgrading their equipment) and it seems as though they weren't factory reset. I've tried the NetICs and ctrl-c methods to no avail. Interestingly enough I do have rw SNMP access, but when I uploaded the config to my tftp server it looked like it was in a binary format. I ran strings on it, and it only saw a bunch of stuff for the ports. I also did a snmpwalk, but none of the string OIDs came up with anything helpful, just some MAC Addresses.

Anything else I'm missing? They all have cascade ports installed, I was hoping to find one switch that had been reset but so far no dice.

Thanks in advance

Well, I found that only 2 or so of them were running 3.1, and the rest are all SW version 2, and set to defaults. Unfortunately, it seems like the SW version 2 switches don't see the version 3's in the cascades, so I can't reset them. And I guess nortel requires you to purchase a support contract to get access to the newer software versions? Such a shame, especially considering they're EOL'd now.

Oh, I know the posts are pretty close together -- I thought I'd hit submit a few hours ago, and just now realized I was still on the preview page. :)

Do either of you by any chance have access to another Baystack 450?

Man I just now saw this. I have 450's all over the place.

By default the com port is not secured. Straight through cable

9600
8
none
1
hardware

username and password "nortel" all lower case. From there you can change the other level passwords

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dinowuff

Man I just now saw this. I have 450's all over the place.

By default the com port is not secured. Straight through cable

9600
8
none
1
hardware

username and password "nortel" all lower case. From there you can change the other level passwords

---

That actually worked for the version 3's that were locked. Got them all up to 4.1.0.6, which was the latest I could find, now to see if I can make them do anything interesting :)

Thanks