How to Reset vi-admin Password on vMA 5

Well, I’ve been here before. Came to use the vMA I have set up in my lab environment earlier, and got the following when trying to log in…

The procedure for resetting the password on vMA 5 is different to earlier versions, so will run through it here. First of all we need to restart the appliance, and change an option on the GRUB bootloader:

Now we need to select the first option “SUSE linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1 for VMware” and press ‘e’ to edit.

Go to the second line, that starts with “kernel /vmlinuz..” and again press ‘e’ to edit. Move to the end of the line and add the following: init=/bin/bash and hit Enter.

Now press ‘b’ to boot the vMA. The vMA will boot and you will be presented with  a command prompt.

Reset the vi-admin password, by entering the following command:

# passwd vi-admin

Once done, reboot the vMA. You should now be able to log in!

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