Hmm, not sure wtf happened but logging into my test environment VMWare vSphere vCenter Appliance 5.5 was suddenly a no-go. And unlucky me is also about 3000 miles away from the cluster 🙁
Technically I can still manage the three-node-cluster by accessing each node individually using the local account but that’s not the way.
Password reset steps
- login to the node which holds the vCenter Appliance
- restart the vCenter Appliance VM
- select the “console” tab and wait for the GRUB bootmenu
- select the second option “failsafe” –> DO NOT PRESS ENTER
- editing boot options is prohibited by the default password. This does not change.
- press “p” and enter the password “vmware”
- select the line that starts with “kernel”
- press “e” (this will edit the line to add boot options)
- and add ” init=/bin/sh” to the end
- press enter
- now press “b” to boot vCenter Appliance in single-user mode
- when you have the prompt, type “passwd root” and provide a new root password
- type “reboot”
This beats a reinstall and/or recovery through backup 🙂