Admin password unknown, what can i do?

There are a few possibilities. The last time I had a customer that had this problem, Novell charged $250 for a one time use of a "Novell-Only" NLM that unlocked and changed the admin password. If you have a support contract, you should be all set. If not, break out the checkbook...

go to http://www.novell.com and you can find your support options there.

There are also third-party solutions that can do this (if you ever expect to see this again *cringe*). I know Adroit has one for about $500...do a Google search for Lost Netware Password and you should find a few other possibilities.

Good luck!

If you remember the original password with which the first NW4 or NW5 server was installed, you can do a bindery login as SUPERVISOR and use that password. Then with syscon (you may have to download that, or download sysconw.exe for a windows version) you can change admin's password.

Is anyone maybe admin-equivalent?

Try www.netwarefiles.com, there are shareware/freeware recovery programs. There's no guarantee though.

Jim

You don't need to remember the password that the server was installed with! (I know, because I have doen this myself).
Get access to a file server that has a replica of the [Root] partition AND a partition where you have full supervisory access.
Set Bindery emulation to BOTH of these partitions.

Using syscon (if you don't have a copy, there is one on Novell's website - "syscon for Netware 4.x") change the SUPERVISOR password for the account that has now appeared. You have to do this, because although you have (through the bindery emulation) supervisory rights on the supervisor account (a bindery-only object), NDS will not allow you to change the Admin account directly.
Now login as the Supervisor (bindery) account. You can now reset the admin password.

Once you have logged in (via NDS) as the admin, create another admin account, and grant it explicit admin rights (don't rely on admin-equivalent) with a different password for future emergency access.

It is also worthwhilegranting explicit supervisory rights for each admin account to each child partition (rather than relying on inherited rights) if anyone in your company "experiments" with rights filters - you may lock your admin account out of part of the tree.

Hope this helps

Roger