Recovery method for Salt (VSSC) root and admin user when those user passwords are not known

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

This procedure outlines how to reset your root local user password to 'salt' for logging into the Aria Config UI if you have forgotten it. This should only be used as last resort as the command will reset what ever the current root local user password is to salt. If the user has another account with the permissions to change the root password in the Aria Config UI that method should be used

Symptoms:
Recovery steps for Salt (VSSC) root and admin user when those user passwords are not known. We were not able to find any public KB for this. For example : https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2149950 . We are looking for something like this for Salt (VSSC) root and admin user. 

Cause

If the user has forgotten the root password to the Aria Config UI and they do not have another account that can change the password in the UI they can use this procedure to change the value to salt in the database.

Resolution

ssh to your postgres server as root:

switch to the postgres user:

 su - postgres

start the postgres client:

 psql

List the databases and not the database that begings with raas_ the default is raas_43cab1f4de604ab185b51d883c5c5d09

 \l

Connect to the raas database

 \c raas_43cab1f4de604ab185b51d883c5c5d09

Update the root password back to the default which is salt

update users set phash = 'sha512:d5df2ed8109172c5232daffc82dc4ca151030c422883b38a509afd925335086b947ef0aeb5319e2229e1f61460091aaa5654a42d8d85791ece96443e495a278c:516121f2ca689e58d4994a844c42db0bbbefc92584dacfc0e92d23eeafa08acf:10000',tokens = '[]' where username = 'root';

Workaround:

None know

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:

If the use can not log in as root to the Aria Cofig UI many operations are not possible though the UI if there is not another user with the same privilege