Cisco NAC Appliance Hardware Installation Guide, Release 4.9(2)
Root Password Recovery

Table Of Contents

Password Recovery

Recovering Root Password for CAM/CAS


Password Recovery


Recovering Root Password for CAM/CAS

Use the following procedure to recover the root password for a CAM or CAS machine. The following password recovery instructions assume that you are connected to the CAM/CAS via a keyboard and monitor (i.e. console or KVM console, NOT a serial console).


Step 1 Power up the machine.

Step 2 When you see the boot loader screen with the "Press any key to enter the menu..." message, press any key.

Step 3 You will be at the GRUB menu with one item in the list "'Cisco Clean Access (2.6.18-194.el5)." Press "e" to edit.

Step 4 You will see multiple choices as follows:

root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.el5 ro root=/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,9600n8
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-194.el5.img

Step 5 Scroll to the second entry (line starting with "kernel...") and press "e" to edit the line.

Step 6 Delete the line "console=ttyS0,9600n8" and edit the line so it appears as follows:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.el5 ro root=/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 console=tty0 single

Step 7 Press "b" to boot the machine in single user mode. You should be presented with a root shell prompt after boot-up (note that you will not be prompted for password).

Step 8 At the prompt, type "passwd", press Enter and follow the instructions.

Step 9 After the password is changed, enter "reboot" to reboot the appliance.