Reset VMware ESXi root password

If you forgot your vSphere ESXi * / 6 host root password, the only supported option by VMware for recovery is a new installation of the host.

Additional Information in the VMware Knowledge Base Article

How you can still reset the root password without a new installation , we will show you in this article.

However, we would like to emphasize that this approach may be neither be supported by VMware still by Thomas-Krenn.

VMware at Thomas-Krenn

Method

You must boot a linux live system, or an installed linux system on another disc, on the vSphere Host. In our example, an installed Ubuntu 14.04 was used , the vSphere installation was on an USB stick .

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  check with parted the partitions
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  Mount the corresponding partition (the first after the boot partition) and unzip the state.tgz directory . The shadow file can be opened with an editor
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  Between the first two colons is the encrypted root password
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  Delete all characters between the first two colons and save the change
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  Create the local.tgz archive again and then the state.tgz archive and move it to the Mount Path
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  You can log in as root on the vSphere Host now without a password
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  Configure a new root password

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Author: Sebastian Köbke