Reset root password

[jhyiesla]

I've received a report from Skyline that my collector is inactive. When I log in, I can see that the collectors are running, but all of my vCenters are pretty much failing to report in. I've not been able to restart them and get them going. I know that I'm running on an older version and was going to do an update. However, when I attempt to login to the appliance:5480, I apparently have forgotten the root password. Following instructions from a VMWare article, I've stopped the appliance boot with an "e" and then added "rw init=/bin/bash" to the end of the boot line and hit F10. This does take me to a command prompt.  However, when I enter in the command passwd, I get an error that the command is not found.

[sri_vmware · Accepted solution]

Hi jhyiesla,

Welcome to communities.

Please confirm that you have entered rw init=/bin/bash as shown in the below screenshot

Press F10 to access the command prompt.

Later enter the below commands

1. mount -o remount,rw /
2. /sbin/pam_tally2 -r -u root

Mostly you might see a similar output as below

Later enter the below command

a.passwd root

This should help to reset the password. Once the new password is set type reboot -f

Post reboot we should be able to login with the newly set root password.

To address the inactive skyline collector status, kindly share the account name, the email address used to register skyline, collector id in the below link.

https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9e31b64730f2419ba2aa50f6c72e66a3

[jhyiesla]

Thanx, that did it and I was able to reset the root PW. When I got back into the console, two of the three vCenters are now showing green.  I'm going to update the appliance and see what happens.