The following procedure applies to NSX Manager, NSX Edge, Cloud Service Manager, and NSX Intelligence appliances.

Note: If you have an NSX Manager cluster, resetting the password for the admin or audit user on one NSX Manager will automatically reset the password for the other NSX Managers in the cluster. Note that the synchronization of the password can take several minutes or more.

If you have renamed the user admin or audit, use the new name in the following procedures.

When you reboot an appliance, the GRUB boot menu does not appear by default. The following procedure requires that you have configured GRUB to display the GRUB boot menu. For more information about configuring GRUB and changing the GRUB root password, see "Configure NSX-T Data Center to Display the GRUB Menu at Boot Time" in the NSX-T Data Center Installation Guide.

If you know the password for root but have forgotten the password for admin or audit, you can reset it using the following procedure:
  1. Log in to the appliance as root.
  2. For an NSX Intelligence appliance or a Cloud Service Manager, skip this step. For NSX Edge, run the command /etc/init.d/nsx-edge-api-server stop. Otherwise, run the command /etc/init.d/nsx-mp-api-server stop.
  3. To reset the password for admin, run the command passwd admin.
  4. To reset the password for audit, run the command passwd audit.
  5. Run the command touch /var/vmware/nsx/reset_cluster_credentials.
  6. For NSX Edge, run the command /etc/init.d/nsx-edge-api-server start. Otherwise, run the command /etc/init.d/nsx-mp-api-server start.

If you have forgotten the root user's password, you can reset it using the following procedure. You can then use the above procedure to reset the password for admin or audit.

Procedure

  1. Connect to the console of the appliance.
  2. Reboot the system.
  3. When the GRUB boot menu appears, press the left SHIFT or ESC key quickly. If you wait too long and the boot sequence does not pause, you must reboot the system again.
  4. Press e to edit the menu.
    Enter the user name root and the GRUB password for root (not the same as the appliance's user root).
  5. Keep the cursor on the Ubuntu selection.
  6. Press e to edit the selected option.
  7. Search for the line starting with linux and add systemd.wants=PasswordRecovery.service to the end of the line.
  8. Press Ctrl-X to boot.
  9. When the log messages stop, enter the new password for root.
  10. Enter the password again.
    The boot process will continue.
  11. After the reboot, you can verify the password change by logging in as root with the new password.