[ale] Vmware esxi 3.5 root password lost

[Justin Goldberg]

I have a vmware esxi 3.5.1 server I inherited from someone else with a
lost password.

My options are:

-boot with slax and modify the /etc/shadow and passwd files within the
latest modified state.tgz file, and create another root level user and
I can then change the root password (saving a backup of the file just
in case).

-null the root password, which I've read on vmware.com can cause
problems (but its a standalone server with no NFS and has been offline
for a year)

-do a reinstall from cd, which will reset the password and manually
add the datastores back.

Fdisk -l shows 1 VMFS partition, but I can list files on the auto
mounted /mnt/sda2, sda3, sda5, and sda6 in slax. Also this server has
6 scsi drives.

I'd blow the data away but it has a licensed copy of vmware. Also I'm
curious what is running on it.

Also does anyone know if windows 2003 or 2008 runs well within linux vmware?

Thanks


-- 

Justin Goldberg

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