ESX root Password Complexity Workaround

ESX server enforces complexity requirements on passwords and if the one you want to set up doesn’t meet them, password change will fail with something like that:

Weak password: not enough different characters or classes for this length. Try again.

You can obviously play with PAM settings to lower the requirements, but here the the tip on how to really quickly workaround that.

Simply generate a hash for you password using the following command:

# openssl passwd -1

And then replace the root password hash in /etc/shadow with the new one.

From my experience on ESX 4.1, you won’t even need to reconnect the host to the vCenter. It will continue working just fine.

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Tags: change, complexity, ESX, hash, passwd, password, shadow, vmware