NetGear Still Sucks
I recently got my hands on an old NETGEAR ReadyNAS 1100 with firmware 3.01c1-p6 installed. The first thing I did was force a completely reset to factory defaults (by holding the reset button in for 30 seconds while powering the device on). When I then went to log into the unit in order to set it up I found that the default username/password combination ("admin"/"netgear1") didn't work. I browsed all over the interwebs looking for information but everywhere I looked (including NETGEAR forums where other people have had this problem) the mantra was "reset to factory defaults and log in with admin/netgear1". But that very simple tactic didn't work. Finally, I did some Googling on the firmware version which eventually led me to this five-year-old posting which gave me the hint I needed:
The ReadyNAS is a Network-Attached-Storage (NAS) device based on Linux 2.4.20 and debian-sparc with a custom frontend for management. Out of the box, the user cannot log in into a shell on the device. There are two enabled users, one called "admin" (with the default password "infrant1", which is documented), and another one, "root", which is not documented. The user "admin" does not have a shell assigned, so it cannot log in interactively. It is used only for the web frontend.
Sure enough, I was able to log into the device using admin/infrant1 (which I'll be immediately changing so don't get any funny ideas). I'm posting this for two reasons:
- So that if anyone else on the interwebs is having this problem hopefully I can save them a few days of luckless Googling, and
- To point out that NETGEAR still sucks.