How to Perform a Password Recovery on BIG-IQ 6.1.0 VE

[JacobBennett]

Hello! I'm in the process of deploying BIG-IQ in our environment and right now we have a Proof of Concept VM setup to test with. However, I forgot the password!

I have completed the following steps to recover the password, but haven't had any luck.

Reboot the system

Select proper boot version and press e to edit the options.

Scroll over the line that has "vmlinuz" in it.

Press e to edit that line and add "single" to the end.

Press b to boot.

Once a prompt appears type

 mount -a
 passwd root 

Enter new password twice

type reboot

However, once I reboot and get back to the normal login screen, I'm told that the password for root is still incorrect. I have tried this procedure a couple of times using different passwords and I get the same result.

I'm thinking the password recovery procedure might be different for BIG-IQ but haven't found any supporting documentation online that states that.

Any guidance regarding this would be super helpful!

[boneyard]

you mention normal login screen, is that the webgui? if so, can you login with the root account on the CLI? and from there change the admin login?

[JacobBennett]

Hello,

Sorry, I should have been more specific. When I reboot and get back to the login prompt at the CLI and try to log into root it states that the password is incorrect.

[boneyard]

ah that is a shame, i never performed this on biq-iq, but on big-ip the method changed starting from 14.1, this might also be the case for big-iq, but not sure

https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K23220345

[JacobBennett]

Sadly this also does not work. I think I may have to start from scratch here. Thank you for your help!

[boneyard]

last thing to make sure, you are booting in the bootslot which you selected to change the password on?

[JacobBennett · Accepted solution]

Okay, I found a solution to this problem and I will post the steps below in case anyone else runs into trouble.

Sequence of events that worked for me:

1. Reboot the system.
2. Boot into single-user mode (same way as stated in initial question)
3. Type "passwd root"
4. Set the new passworld
5. Type "mount -a"
6. Now, instead of typing "restart" type "exit".

Once everything came back up I was able to sign in with the root password I just set and then I went ahead and changed the admin password as well.