Visitors

VMware vCloud Connector Server / Node admin account: Unable to authenticate user. Please try again.

I had to re-visit a vCloud Connector environment I built quite a while ago but could not login to neither VMware vCloud Connector Server nor Node with the admin account. I was sure that I did not change the default password (vmware) so was the customer.  I also checked that admin account was not locked out – see “HOW TO: Unlock admin account in vCloud Connector Server / Node” blog post for details.

Here is the error message:

VMware vCloud Connector Server & Node - Unable to authenticate user - Please try again

After a bit of goggling I found Marek Zdrojewski’s post “How to upgrade vCloud Connector 2.5 to version 2.6” that mentions that VMware vCloud Connector Server / Node admin password may have expired.

When I tried to login to the vCC Server / Node console as admin, there was a confirmation that the admin password has indeed expired and needs to be changed:

login as: admin
vCloud Connector Node Appliance
admin@vcn001's password:
Your password has expired. Choose a new password.
WARNING: Your password has expired.
You must change your password now and login again!
Changing password for admin.
Old Password:

etc etc

I did not want to change the default password and therefore reconfigured admin account to stop it expiring.

Login to vCCS/vCCN as root and use chage command check current admin account aging.

login as: root
vCloud Connector Node Appliance
root@vcn001's password:
vcn001:~ # chage -l admin
Minimum:        0
Maximum:        365
Warning:        7
Inactive:       -1
Last Change:            Jun 15, 2013
Password Expires:       Jun 15, 2014
Password Inactive:      Never
Account Expires:        Never

To disable password aging / expiration for user admin, type command as follows and set:
Maximum Password Age to 99999
Account Expiration Date to -1

vcn001:~ # chage -M 99999 -E -1 admin
Aging information changed.
vcn001:~ # chage -l admin
Minimum:        0
Maximum:        99999
Warning:        7
Inactive:       -1
Last Change:            Jun 15, 2013
Password Expires:       Never
Password Inactive:      Never
Account Expires:        Never

Hope this helps.

I would like to thank Marek Zdrojewski (@MarekDotZ) for his prompt replies and his help to get me on the right track in troubleshooting this issue. Please check out his blog http://defaultreasoning.com

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

  

  

  

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.