Changing dradmin OS user password in Performance Management
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Changing dradmin OS user password in Performance Management

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Article ID: 37746

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Updated On:

Products

CA Infrastructure Management CA Performance Management - Usage and Administration DX NetOps

Issue/Introduction

This will address a few questions, as well as a possible failure to restart the database once shut down.

  1. What is the default password for the dradmin OS user?
  2. How to change the dradmin OS user password?
  3. What is the Data Repository Vertica database administrative user password?
  4. What is the impact to Vertica when changing the dradmin OS user password?
  5. When trying to start a Vertica database, it may fail to start with SSH failures between nodes.

Environment

Dx NetOps Performance Management any version

Cause

The cause for the possible database restart failure with SSH errors between nodes is the dradmin OS users password has expired.

Testing ssh between nodes using the OS dradmin user presents a password expiration notice requesting the password be changed as it's expired.

Resolution

Who is the 'dradmin' user?

It is the OS level user that acts as the Data Repository Vertica database administrative user. It is often referred to as the 'dradmin' in user guides. This is the recommended user name per the installation guides but it can be set to a different name.

How is the user created?

The user can be created in one of two ways.

  • Manually created prior to Vertica installation
  • Allow the Vertica installation to create it during the installation process

Is there a difference between the manually created user, and the user created by the installation process? The one difference is that the user generated by the installation process does not set a password for the user.

When allowing the installation to generate the user, you specify the dradmin user name in the dr.properties file. This file is then passed to the installation at run time. When the installation runs, if the user doesn't already exist it is created with no password. When generating the user manually prior to installation, its rare that the user would be created without a password.

What is required to change the password?

  • We can change the password for the dradmin user without impact to the Vertica database installation.
  • No other change is necessary in the Vertica database system, or other related CA Performance Manager environment components, when making the change to the dradmin OS user password.
  • Changing the dradmin OS user password should have no impact on the SSH keys configured for multi-node cluster configuration communications.
  • This is possible regardless of the method used to generate the user. This solution can be applied if the users password has been forgotten and needs to be reset as well.

How to change the password

To change the users password, follow the normal Linux user password change options. Most common would be to:

  1. Log in as the root user
  2. Run "passwd <userName>" where <userName> is replaced with the user name of the user whose password needs to be changed.
  3. Follow the prompt to enter the new password and then to confirm it.

Note that the password entry won't be echo'd to the command prompt. Type with care in order to avoid setting an unknown password.

After setting a new password for the OS user, the database restart failures with SSH errors should be resolve. If not there may be some other problem with the SSH keys themselves.

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