FATAL: password authentication failed for user “vc” while upgrading vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 to 6.0

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Upgrading vCenter Server Appliance to 6.0 fails with the error : Source vCenter Server validation found an issue: 1 [08001](101) [unixODBC]FATAL: password authentication failed for user “vc”.

• In the VCSA_0000.log log file, located at %AppData%\Local\VMware\CIP\vcsaInstaller\sessions\session_####\logs\, you see entries similar to:

08001](101) [unixODBC]FATAL: password authentication failed for user \\\"vc\\\\\n\], \"id\": \"vcdb.error.validate.full.linux.vcdb\",\"localized\": \"Source vCenter Server validation found an issue: 1 [08001](101) [unixODBC]FATAL: password authentication failed for user \\\"vc\\\"\\n\",\"translatable\": \"Source vCenter Server validation found an issue: %(0)s\" },\"resolution\": {\"id\": \"vcdb.action.read.source.validate.full.log.linux\"

Environment

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.0.x

Cause

This can be caused by a special character in the "vc" user password

Resolution

Caution: Please consult an Escalation Engineer before performing these steps, and confirm all services are up and running before proceeding with the steps below.

To resolve this issue we need to change 'vc' user password on vCenter Server:

1. Take a snapshot of vCenter Server and also take a backup of vCenter Appliance database using this article.
2. Connect to the database using below command,
   • /opt/vmware/vpostgres/9.0/bin/psql -d VCDB -U postgres
3. Reset passwords for user 'vc' account.  New password could be custom password, however password must be the same for "vc" and "postgres" accounts.
   • ALTER USER vc PASSWORD 'new_password';
   • ALTER USER postgres PASSWORD 'new_password';
4. Exit from the database using below command,
   • ​​​​​​​ \q
5. ​​​​​​​Back up the embedded_db.cfg file below file
   • ​​​​​​​cp /etc/vmware-vpx/embedded_db.cfg /var/tmp/embedded_db.cfg.orig
6. ​​​​​​​Modify password in config file with the new password created from Step 3.
   • ​​​​​​​vi /etc/vmware-vpx/embedded_db.cfg
   • EMB_DB_PASSWORD='new_password'
7. Modify the passwords in the hidden file /root/.pgpass with the new_password
   • ​​​​​​​localhost:5432:VCDB:postgres:new_password
   • localhost:5432:postgres:new_password
   • localhost:5432:VCDB:vc:new_password
8. Modify the password in the vcdb.properties
   • vi /etc/vmware-vpx/vcdb.properties
9. Run the below command and when it prompts provide the new password
   • /usr/sbin/vpxd -p
10. Make sure you stop and start the vcenter service (vpxd) using below command
    • /etc/init.d/vmware-vpxd stop
    • /etc/init.d/vmware-vpxd start

 

Additional Information

Triaging a vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 installation, upgrade, or migration (6.0 U2m) failure