Resetting/Unlocking admin & root account passwords on vSphere Replication & Site Recovery Manager

Products

• VMware Live Recovery
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

GNU GRUB menu contains slight changes due to a change of operating system from SUSE Linux to Photon OS.

Environment

VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.x
VMware vSphere Replication 8.x

VMware vSphere Replication 9.x

VMware Live Site Recovery

Cause

• Root password for vSphere Replication (VR) appliance is not known by the administrator.
• vSphere Replication root password is lost or is locked.

Resolution

• Shutdown vSphere replication appliance from vSphere client
• Delay the boot sequence of the VM 
• Power on vSphere replication appliance. When the Photon OS splash screen appears, press 'e' to enter GNU GRUB edit menu

  Note:  The Photon OS splash screen only appears very briefly, so be quick about it. It is better to use VMware Remote Console rather than the Web Console

   
 

• In the GNU GRUB edit menu, go to the end of the line that starts with linux, add a space and type rw init=/bin/bash. After adding these values, GNU GRUB edit menu should look exactly like this:

 

   

   For 8.4 the screen will look different  

   

   VLSR9.X

  init=/bin/bash

   

• Press the F10 key to boot and at the bash command prompt mount the root partition 

           mount -o remount, rw /

• Enter passwd then enter to change the password

passwd

 

New password: <enter new password>

 

Retype new password: <repeat password>

 

passwd: password updated successfully ​​​

 

Note : The above will change only root password, if you need to change admin password need to perform additional steps as below

 

passwd admin

 

New password: <enter new password>

 

Retype new password: <repeat password>

 

    passwd: password updated successfully 

​​​
         

• If admin account password is locked, VAMI page for appliance will fail to login,
  
  

• For product version 8.8 and above you will check and clear the lock with the following command
  
  

  pam_tally2 -u root ----->If locked run: 
  /sbin/pam_tally2 -r -u root
  
  pam_tally2 -u admin ----->If locked run:
  /sbin/pam_tally2 -r -u admin

• For product  version 8.8 and VLSR 9.x use the command 

  

  faillock --user root  ----->If locked run:
  /sbin/faillock --user root --reset 
  
  faillock --user admin  ----->If locked run:
  /sbin/faillock --user admin --reset   

• At the command prompt, unmount the file system using the below command

      umount / 
 

• Reboot the appliance 

         reboot -f 
 

• After the VLSR appliance reboots, log in with the new root password

Additional Information

Resetting a lost VMware vSphere Replication root password