How to reset an IBDR Appliance password

How to reset an IBDR Appliance password

Introduction

If you have lost or forgotten your password to log in to the IBDR Appliance, follow the steps listed in this article to reset it.

Prerequisites

  1. IPMI access to the IBDR Appliance, or physical access to the IBDR Appliance with monitor and keyboard connected to the device. 

Instructions

1) Reboot the IBDR Appliance.


2) Wait for the appliance to show the boot loader, and then press any key on the keyboard (except Enter and Return) to interrupt the boot process. You will have 5 seconds to interrupt the boot process before the appliance OS starts booting. If this prompt is missed, you will need to reboot the appliance again.

3) Select the option that starts with "OS [version]", and then press e on the keyboard to edit the boot options.

Select boot option

4) Go to the end of the line that starts with linux and add the following command to the end of the line:
rd.break

Press Ctrl+X on the keyboard to resume booting. Due to the rd.break command the appliance will boot to the command line.

Interrupt booting

5) Check the access mode on the /sysroot mount point and make sure it is set to read-write. It will either be in ro (read-only) or rw (read-write). In order to check this, run the following command:
mount | grep sysroot

If /sysroot is mounted in read-only you will get the following output (look for ro in the command output). If rw is listed insted of ro, skip this step and proceed to step 6.

Read-only mount point

If ro (read-only) is listed, run the following command to change the access mode to rw (read-write):
mount -o remount,rw /sysroot/

Remount mount point

To confirm that /sysroot is mounted in read-write mode, look for rw in the command output. 

Read-write mount point


6) Now that the root directory has been changed to read-write, you will need to update the root directory for running processes to proceed with the password change. This can be done by running the following command:
chroot /sysroot

This command will lead to an entry prompt and will not provide any output.

Change working root directory


7) Run the following command to initiate the password change:
passwd

Follow the on-screen instructions to change the password. Once you receive the output "all authentication tokens have been updated successfully" the password has been updated.

Reset password


8) In order to apply the changed password, it will be necessary to relabel the file system. This can be done by running the following command:
touch ./autorelabel

Relabel file system


9) Exit and log out of the command line to reboot the appliance in normal mode using the following commands:
exit
logout

The system will need to take some time to finalize the password changes. Depending on the system performance and the number of files this can take up to 10 minutes. Once this has been completed, the appliance will automatically reboot into normal mode. 

Back to normal boot