Hello,
I have a VMware ESXi 6.5 host on which I cannot access the root account. Each time I attempt to login, either via the Web interface or via SSH, it tells me that the password is incorrect.
Fortunately, I do have another user with admin access on the machine, so I can still get in. If I log in as that user, and then reset the root user's password, it appears to work, but I am still unable to login as root. This is true whether I reset it via the Web interface or via the shell with the passwd command.
No matter what I do, it tells me that the password for the root account is incorrect.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.
Hi,
You may have locked the account because you entered the password for ESXi 6.5 incorrectly. In this case, you can access the shell and run the following command.
pam_tally2 --user root --reset
After running this command, try logging in again.
It may also be trying to be a 3rd party product login to ESXi. Or, if the ESXi is open to the external network, brute force may be attempted. You need to check this out.
Check the /var/log/auth.log & vmkernel.log files, maybe there are some failed logins from any other backup or monitoring tools that try to log in to the ESXi host
