Hey,

I bought a used Nokia N900 from a local phone store. It came with the box with matching IMEIs so no it wasn't stolen.

When I tried resetting all settings, it asked for a passcode. Found that the default code was 12345 but it didn't work. Rang up the store and they swear that the code was 12345 when the previous owner sold it [to them] and I must have set it by myself ()?

Okay, no problem. Followed the instructions here and when I get to the bit where I enter the line in xterm to get the DES hash I get stuck.

I tried in the console in winscp but that, after entering the code, showed 'root::'. Thinking it was an error I tried this line in xterm:

The resulting file, when opened in Notepad, also shows 'root::' as well (thus, John the Ripper cannot 'crack' the code).

N900, running Maemo 5 version 10.2010.19-1. Hong Kong official version which I believe is the same as the Global variant.

Cheers,

Either you did not run that command as root (see http://wiki.maemo.org/Root_access) or the file system has been corrupted.

looks, like the grep does not return anything.
try to execute the command separately:

grep -A 13 lock_code /dev/mtd1

and check if it returns something.
you most likely need to be root, as pointed out already.

dude call the guy who sold it !! i have had some problems like that when i flashed my phone 2-3 times due to some other reason !! an i tried 12345 even after flashing!! but then i tried the code in root still waste!! then i suddenly thought my previous code which i made and it worked !!

hope so this helps if nothing else works !! you need to ask the guy what the code was !!

After running

in a root shell the following is output:

The '?'s a diamond-shaped icons with a ? 'inside' them.

Then I tried the original script

in root this time. The resulting file, when opened in Notepad, also shows 'root::'.

@anaskr I don't know who sold it to the shop. The shop swears that the code was 12345 when they sold it to me. Not sure how I'm going to contact the original owner.

I just reflashed both the eMMC and the main memory before trying to hack the code. Is it likely that the flash corrupted something? Everything else seems to be fine...

No one? Last resort would be to take it to Nokia Care... but I'd prefer not to (why should I have to pay just to find the code)

try with:
grep -A 13 lock_code /dev/mtd1| tail -1 > /home/user/MyDocs/old_lockcode

In a root shell?

uhm that's the one liner i originally wrote to help people recover... maybe the HK version has it's code placed somewhere else... try to play with -A 50 or -B 50 and see if you can spot a 13 caracter long string with [a-z][A-Z] and maybe "." and other chars...

But in any case it has to be 13 chars long...(DES)