VCF Operations Fleet Management Appliance: Reset Root Password

Products

• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

• The root account of the VCF Operations Fleet Management Appliance is locked.
• The root account password has been lost or forgotten.
• Unable to login to Fleet Management Appliance with the root account.
• Can't login with the root password.
• Password/login issues.

Additional Symptoms Reported

The root account of the VCF Operations Fleet Management Appliance has expired

Environment

VCF 9.x

Resolution

To reset the root password for the Fleet Management Appliance:

1. Before proceeding with the steps below, take a snapshot of the Fleet Management Appliance. 
2. Reboot the Fleet Management Appliance.
3. After the Photon OS starts, press the e key to enter the GNU GRUB Edit Menu.
4. Locate the line that begins with the word "Linux".
5. Append these entries to the end of the line
   rw init=/bin/bash
   
   
6. Press the F10 key to continue booting.
7. Run the command
   mount -o remount,rw /
   
   
8. Unlock the 'root' account using the command below if it is already locked after multiple failed login attempts with incorrect passwords.
   /usr/sbin/faillock --user root --reset
   
   
9. Enter the new root password twice to confirm
   passwd
   
   
10. Unmount the filesystem by running this command (yes, the unmount command is umount  -  it's not a spelling error):
    umount /
    
    
11. Reboot the appliance by running this command:
    reboot -f
    
    
12. Verify access to the appliance using the new root password.
13. Remove the initial snapshot if applicable.
14. Check the status of the root account's expiration:
    chage -l root
    
    
15. Set the root account never to expire:
chage -m 0 -M -1 root
    
    
16. Confirm that the root account is no longer expired:
    chage -l root

Additional Information

If the root account password has expired and is still known, refer to KB: VCF Fleet Manager root account disconnected in VCF Operations

If the admin@local account password needs to be reset, refer to KB: admin@local account for Fleet Management component appears as disconnected