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peetz
Leadership
Leadership

vCSA 6.0: Bad URL displayed in "pi shell" disclaimer

Greetings,

I enabled the bash shell in the vCSA 6.0 appliance, and each time I start it using "pi shell" the following disclaimer is printed:

    ---------- !!!! WARNING WARNING WARNING !!!! ----------

Your use of "pi shell" has been logged!

The "pi shell" is intended for advanced troubleshooting operations and while
supported in this release, is a deprecated interface, and may be removed in a
future version of the product.  For alternative commands, exit the "pi shell"
and run the "help" command.

The "pi shell" command launches a root bash shell.  Commands within the shell
are not audited, and improper use of this command can severely harm the
system.

Help us improve the product!  If your scenario requires "pi shell," please
submit a Service Request, or post your scenario to the
communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vcenter/cloudvm forum.

... but the URL referenced here (http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vcenter/cloudvm) cannot be found!

I have one or two scenarios that require the use of "pi shell" and I really want to post them here in the forums, but a forum named "cloudvm" does not (yet?) exist.

Can someone from VMware please comment? Should I just post *here* or wait for the cloudvm forum to be created?

Thanks

Andreas

Twitter: @VFrontDe, @ESXiPatches | https://esxi-patches.v-front.de | https://vibsdepot.v-front.de
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9 Replies
akodenkiri
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Filed internal ticket to address the issue.

---------------------------------------------------------------- If you found this or any other answer helpful, please consider to award points. (use Correct or Helpful buttons) Regards ak
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MayurBhosle
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi Andreas,

I will get this URL fixed. We are currently working on adding new features and also fixing issues in the appliance. Can you post your issues here ? So we can discuss and If possible, fix them by the U1 release.

Thanks

Mayur

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peetz
Leadership
Leadership

Hi Mayur,

here is what I needed "pi shell" for:

- change password expiration and complexity for the local root user (this might also be needed in restricted environments that e.g. want a *shorter* password lifetime)

- change the shell of the local root user to enable access via scp/sftp

Details are in my blog post here: VMware Front Experience: vCSA 6.0 tricks: shell access, password expiration and certificate warnings

Thank you for looking into this!

Andreas

Twitter: @VFrontDe, @ESXiPatches | https://esxi-patches.v-front.de | https://vibsdepot.v-front.de
egrigsonFS
Contributor
Contributor

Also for changing the WebClient timeout parameter (among others) in /etc/vmware/vsphere-client/web.properties.

Regards,

Ed.

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grumpyoldtech
Contributor
Contributor

IS this link going to be fixed.

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MayurBhosle
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

@Andreas,

I read your blog. In 6.0 U1, VCSA will have a new HTML5 UI which replaces old VAMI. This should provide you with password management features for the root account such as email, expiration time and setting new password. You can still use the CLI for some of these actions. The generic CLI/API for password management won't make into U1. There is feature request opened for this and hopefully it makes it into next release.

About the Winscp, I agree it is big pain point for many customers. We don't want customer to upload files to this appliance, if they have to it should be a feature requirement.

Having said that, we missed providing UI or CLI to upload sysprep files, certificates. For now you have to change the shell to make winscp working. It is very difficult to make Winscp work in restricted shell, because Winscp internally just runs random commands over SSH, rather than a proper client-server communication. The solution to this is that Appliance UI/Vsphere-client should have provision to upload such files.

I have changed the URL in shell to point to this community and asked users to add tag "appliance" for such discussions.

@Ed,

I will communicate with the vsphere-client team to add a plugin in appliance shell to configure this service. A user should not be required to change files.

/etc/vmware/vsphere-client/web.properties

Thanks again for the feedback.

peetz
Leadership
Leadership

Hi Mayur,

thank you so much! It's great to hear that user feedback actually leads to product improvements quickly.

And - wow! - an HTML5 web interface ... this is something that a lot more people are waiting for!

But I guess it's only the appliance configuration interface that will be HTML5, not (yet?) the complete Web Client, right?

Andreas

Twitter: @VFrontDe, @ESXiPatches | https://esxi-patches.v-front.de | https://vibsdepot.v-front.de
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MayurBhosle
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Yes. You are right. This is a separate standalone UI per appliance written in HTML5. It will only contain appliance configuration.

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peetz
Leadership
Leadership

Hi Mayur,

I just stumbled over another scenario that requires using shell commands on the VCSA: Backing up the embedded database as per VMware KB: Backing up and restoring the vCenter Server 6.0 embedded vPostgres database.

It would be great to have an API plugin that does this.

And of course it would also be great to have that in the new HTML5 management GUI.

Thanks

Andreas

Twitter: @VFrontDe, @ESXiPatches | https://esxi-patches.v-front.de | https://vibsdepot.v-front.de
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