This article shows how to reset the root password on a vMA or VMware Virtual Management Appliance. This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while, mainly as I keep forgetting the password for the vMA in my home lab.
So, if you need to reset the root password for your vMA, this is how.
You need to start by rebooting your vMA, then press a key to interrupt the boot process and enter the grub loader menu:
With the OS highlighted press ‘e’ to edit the boot configuration then select the kernel entry and press ‘e’ again to edit the line:
Next type ‘single’ at the end of the line, then press enter to exit the line edit. Now press ‘b’ to boot the OS using your new boot parameters. This will been the vMA OS into single user mode, from which you can change the vi-admin password.
You do this by typing ‘passwd vi-admin’ at the cli prompt. You can then enter your new password, reboot, and then log in with your new credentials. This same procedure works for other linux distributions, though normally you would be resetting the root user account rather than vi-admin.