VMware ESXi – Troubleshooting Password Not Accepted Issue

authenticationpasswordvmware-esxi

I have a ESXi 6.7 install, where logging in via the Web UI does not work.

The user is root, and password is 20 characters ASCII. I have encountered the same issue previously, and in that instance I manually verified the hash by extracting the config bundle, and encrypting the password I was believed to be correct with the salt from shadow file, and the hash was identical.

Login via SSH saved me at that time.

However, now I have a host which does not have ssh enabled, and I have no direct console access.

Logging the requests, the password is sent in a request to /sdk/, which returns with status 500 Error. The returned data is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
 xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
 xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<soapenv:Body>
<soapenv:Fault><faultcode>ServerFaultCode</faultcode><faultstring>Cannot complete login due to an incorrect user name or password.</faultstring><detail><InvalidLoginFault xmlns="urn:vim25" xsi:type="InvalidLogin"></InvalidLoginFault></detail></soapenv:Fault>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

The request:

<Envelope xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"><Body><Login xmlns="urn:vim25"><_this type="SessionManager">ha-sessionmgr</_this><userName>root</userName><password>actual_password</password><locale>en-US</locale></Login></Body></Envelope>

Has anyone expirienced similar problems with ESXi 6.7.0? I have found similar descriptions from other people, for 6.5.

Best Answer

I have experienced a couple of times that login on the web UI was not possible with the correct password. The solution for me always was to restart the management services, then the login on the web UI worked again.

You will need access via SSH or the local console for that though. If you can't enable SSH access via vCenter you will most likely have to reboot the server.

You could try to enable SSH via PowerCLI, but I wouldn't be very optimistic that the ESXi allows you to log in with that, when the login on the normal web UI doesn't work.

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