Administering Passwords in Diamond-based Systems (VS, LS & MS)

Apricot support two passwords (Power-on and Administrator) on Diamond-based systems. Unfortunately, the IBM Surepath BIOS only allows one. This produces a couple of inconsistencies over which we have little control.

All the possible options are explained below, with the limitations of each.

Power-on Password / Password Prompt set ON
This works as expected. After POST, the power-on password is requested. When this is entered, the system will continue to boot in the normal way.

Power-on Password / Password Prompt set OFF
This works in the same way as above, except that the user is not prompted for their password. The keyboard remains locked until they type in their password and press <ENTER>.

Administrator Password only
Here we see a restriction of the Surepath BIOS. If ONLY the administrator password is set, the Surepath BIOS, which recognises only ONE password (Programmers Technical Reference p.14), interprets this password as a power-on password. For this reason, the user is prompted to enter the power-on password to continue after POST (even though this is the administrator password). This gives no benefit over setting just a power-on password.

Administrator Password / Power-on Password / Password Prompt set ON
This works as expected. After POST, a power-on password is requested. This may be either the administrator password or the power-on password. When a password is entered, the system will continue to boot as normal. If F1 is pressed during POST, the password will determine how access to the BIOS is given.

• If the administrator password is entered, full access to the BIOS is granted.
• If the power-on password is entered, only a summary of the BIOS is displayed.

Administrator Password / Power-on Password / Password Prompt set OFF
After POST, the system will boot as normal, but the keyboard remains locked with the POWER-ON password (as explained above). The administrator's password cannot unlock the keyboard. Without being able to enter the administrator's password, it would be impossible to have full access to the BIOS and no changes to the system could ever be made (without draining CMOS). To prevent this happening, if <F1> is pressed, full access is given to the BIOS, even though only the power-on password is required.

If you wish to use hardware password(s), then to avoid the Surepath password limitation we recommend that you choose one of the following options:

• Power-on Password / Password Prompt set ON
• Power-on Password / Password Prompt set OFF
• Administrator Password / Power-on Password / Password Prompt set ON

The following options illustrate the Surepath password limitation. We recommend that you do not use them:

• Administrator Password only

Administrator Password / Power-on Password / Password Prompt set OFF

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