topic Re: customization of Linux root password in vSphere SDK for Java Discussions

customization of Linux root password

mm6 — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:34:44 GMT

Is there anything in the API for customizing the root password in a Linux vm the same way the Windows admin password can be set?

Re: customization of Linux root password

lamw — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:08:44 GMT

Unfortunately this is not possible with what is available in Linux prep, Linux/UNIX guestOSes is 2nd to Windows in VMware's world and hopefully this will change sooner than later

What you can do as a work around if you have or plan on installing VMware Tools when the guest is provisioned is to have a default password and then use something like VMware VIX API to change the password or upload a new password hash. It's not ideal but that's as automated as you can get today or by default provision your host with the proper password.

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Re: customization of Linux root password

mm6 — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:27:49 GMT

Thanks for the reply. I will look into that.

Re: customization of Linux root password

tasoss — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 09:14:25 GMT

After almost 3 years is there a better solution provided by vmware?

I need to set the password after the creation of a new vm from a template.

Re: customization of Linux root password

narcissujsk — Fri, 12 May 2017 01:29:20 GMT

After another 4 years is there a better solution provided by vmware?

Re: customization of Linux root password

jasper9890 — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 02:46:53 GMT

2019, no improvement?

Re: customization of Linux root password

Damonysq — Mon, 06 Jun 2022 08:15:41 GMT

2022.06.06 no improvement????????????????????????????????????

Re: customization of Linux root password

JamesCurtis — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 12:40:28 GMT

Any news? Can only use cloud-init ?

Re: customization of Linux root password

jc0326 — Tue, 02 May 2023 22:30:55 GMT

I have used the following Postcustomization script. Which creates a random password sends it password to the guestinfo variable and makes the user reset it upon login.

#!/bin/bash

log=/var/log/cust_output.log
if [[ "x${1}" = "xprecustomization" ]]; then
password=$(openssl rand -base64 12)
echo "root:$password" | chpasswd
vmtoolsd --cmd "info-set guestinfo.custom.password $password"
passwd --expire root
elif [[ "x${1}" = "xpostcustomization" ]]; then
echo "customization complete..." >> ${log}
fi