Weird Password problem

[jrewing20111014]

Hi!

Yesterday I've upgraded a Dell customized esxi 5.5.x free version to the recent Dell customized 6.5U2 A10 free version (with an intermediate upgrade over 6.0.x). Now I have the problem that each time I log out from the web ui I can't log in again because of invalid credentials.

The only workarround I've found so far is to login to the console (fortunately I can this via KVM over IP), activate ssh and set a new (or even the same!) password via passwd. For the next time the login will work until I log out.

Is this a known problem?

[dbalcaraz]

As you say, weird issue with the password...
I will definetily go to "reset" the password for root using a liveCD

You can use this process: https://www.altaro.com/vmware/reset-esxi-root-password/

Hope this helps.

[jrewing20111014]

Sorry, I don't know how this should solve this issue. I don't have lost my root password.

Anyway, things are more strange than assumed. It's not even necessary to change the password. It's enough to enable the SSH access mode and it doesn't matter if you disable it or enable it (I can't reproduce it again by only disable the ssh service) . As soon the mode disabled and enabled again the login in the web ui works! Maybe other actions will have the same effect.

What's definitely not enough is to simply log on to the console only.

[jrewing20111014 · Accepted solution]

Ok, I've found the reason.

Before I've started the upgrade I changed the root password to a much more simple complexity for the case I've forced to interact with the console in the datacenter. At this point the issue starts.

I've forgot that I have an active monitoring on this host where I've used the origin password. This resulted in continuously invalid logins from the monitoring system. Further the monitoring for this host ist only for research purposes and has no active alert triggers so I've never got informed of invalid login attempts.

So in reality I didn't never used wrong credentials when I tried to login on the web ui. I simply was locked for 900s continuously! 😕