Today I am midway through setting up my lab and realized the reason VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is failing is because I set the wrong password in my JSON file for the root account on my vCenter appliance.
No big deal, right? Just SSH in and change it. I tried, and got this:
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New password: BAD PASSWORD: it is based on a dictionary word passwd: Authentication token manipulation error passwd: password unchanged |
The bypass was actually easy. Presumably you’re already SSH’d in as root, so you just need to edit /etc/pam.d/system-password
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# Begin /etc/pam.d/system-password # use sha512 hash for encryption, use shadow, and try to use any previously # defined authentication token (chosen password) set by any prior module password requisite pam_cracklib.so dcredit=-1 ucredit=-1 lcredit=-1 ocredit=-1 minlen=6 difok=4 enforce_for_root password required pam_pwhistory.so debug use_authtok enforce_for_root remember=5 password required pam_unix.so sha512 use_authtok shadow try_first_pass # End /etc/pam.d/system-password |
Remove enforce_for_root from the first line with pam_cracklib.so. Save the file, no need to restart any services, and retry passwd.
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New password: BAD PASSWORD: it is based on a dictionary word Retype new password: passwd: password updated successfully |
After that, I re-added enforce_for_root to the file and clicked RETRY back in VCF and all things are happy once again.
It works, thanks