Once again I’m off to reset the password on a Cisco PIX for Dillon Supply. This was done a few months ago by a contractor at the Inflow data center while I walked him through it on the phone (I was in St. Louis) but alas he did not use the write mem command when he was done.
So this Friday I was trying to perform a certificate request for the PIX that failed and in order to save the existing certificates I had to run a reload without writing to memory. Once that was done the password reverted to the old one that no one at Dillon Supply knows. How’s that for project management. Mr. Sylvain Fournier, now residing in France, didn’t even bother to take the responsibility of knowing the password for the companies firewall. And they praised the guy.
Don’t worry though folks, I’ve acquired a $15 USB to Serial converter to use on the laptop you provided that does not have a serial port and I’ve installed the Solarwinds TFTP server and Hyperterminal Private Edition (to send break commands) and I will now once again break into the PIX and reset the password to the factory default. This time I will write mem and put this issue to rest.