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Reset vCenter Passwords via Command Line

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Due to an unfortunate incident with the Last Pass extension on Chrome. I went to change a password with read only permissions and instead ended up locking myself out of the administrator account in vCenter. (yes, I know I shouldn’t have been using it in the first place).

Anyway… Having recently upgraded the environment to vSphere 8.0.3 I was forced to sift through Broadcom’s, admittedly well structured, documentation to rectify the situation.  I made notes of the following so I wouldn’t have to look it all up again in the future.

First and Foremost: Broadcom’s number one step in just about everything (they aren’t wrong): Take a Snapshot of the appliance prior to doing anything.

  1. After taking a snapshot, reboot the vcenter appliance, use the console from the specific ESX server it’s running from. (disable VMotion if applicable first)
  2. Press the ‘e’ key after the Photon OS starts to enter the GNU GRUB Menu
  3. Go to the end of the line beginning with the word ‘Linux’ and append the following: rw init=/bin/bash

Booting into VCSA (if you are completely locked out):

  • Continue booting with by using the: ‘F10’ Key
  • Run the following command: mount -o remount,rw /

Reset the Root password in VCSA

For Vcenter 7 and below:

  1. Log into the shell either by SSH or rebooting the appliance and mounting the partition.
  2. At the command> prompt enable the shell by: shell.set –enable true
  3. Run the command: shell
  4. Run the. Following to change to root shell: sudo -i
  5. Unlock root account with: pam_tally2 –user root –reset
  6. Set new root password: sudo passwd root

For Vcenter 8 and below:

Reset password for SSO User in VCSA:

  1. Log into the shell either by SSH or rebooting the appliance and mounting the partition.
  2. At the command> prompt enable the shell by: shell.set –enable true
  3. Run the command: shell
  4. To reset the root account: /usr/sbin/faillock –user root –reset
  5. To reset password: passwd
  6. Set new root password: sudo passwd root
  1. Log into the shell either by SSH or rebooting the appliance and mounting the partition.
  2. At the command> prompt enable the shell by: shell.set –enable true
  3. Run the command: shell
  4. Run the command: /usr/lib/vmware-vdir/bin/vdcadmintool  which will bring up the following menu:
  1. Press 3 to reset account passwords when prompted to, enter the full UPN name: Example:  administrator@vsphere.local which will generate a new password.