NVP vProxy: Unable to log in using root credentials, root access lost

Summary: Root account access through the vProxy appliance is lost.

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Symptoms

From the VMware vSphere web client, unable to log in to the vProxy appliance using the root account. Access Denied or invalid credentials errors are returned.
 
NOTE: Root access is blocked over SSH by default. Unless SSH configuration file settings on vProxy are set to enable root over SSH, root access returns "Access Denied" over SSH. The root account is accessible through vSphere Virtual Machine (VM) console connection.

You are unable to log in using the vProxy's admin account from either SSH or vSphere web client. Access Denied or Invalid Credential errors are returned.

Cause

Both the root account and admin users are locked out or the user credentials are lost or unknown.

Resolution

NOTE: If access is lost to both the root and admin user account, the vProxy must be redeployed.


The vProxy OVA packages are available through the NetWorker Product Support page.


If the root account is accessible:
If the root account is accessible through the vSphere VM console connection, connect to the vProxy over SSH and login with admin credentials. Switch to the root user account using the below command and specify the root users password.

sudo su -

You can only change (update) the root password if you already have access to the root account.

sudo passwd root

If the admin user password is lost but know the root password, connect to the vProxy from the vSphere web client and login as root. The admin password can be changed with the command:

passwd admin
NOTE: If you change the admin user password, you must update the vProxy password in NetWorker. Otherwise, it continues to try to use the old password and locks out the account. This can be done from the NetWorker Management Console (NMC) or NetWorker Web User Interface (NWUI).
 vProxy properties in the NetWorker Management Console   
Figure 1: Screenshot of vProxy properties from the NetWorker Management Console (NMC).
vProxy properties in NetWorker Web User Interface
Figure 2: Screenshot of vProxy properties from the NetWorker Web User Interface (NWUI).

If the admin account is locked, log in with the root account from the vSphere web client and reset admin account with pam_tally2 to reset it:

pam_tally2 --user admin --reset

If the admin account continues to become locked, check to see where the login requests are coming from:

journalctl -u sshd | grep -w 'admin'

This command lists the IP addresses of systems which attempted (and failed) to login using the admin credentials:

Dec 06 09:23:36 nsr-vproxy02.amer.lan sshd[9407]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=192.168.9.100  user=admin
Dec 06 09:23:38 nsr-vproxy02.amer.lan sshd[9407]: Failed password for admin from 192.168.9.100 port 54788 ssh2

Affected Products

NetWorker

Products

NetWorker Family, NetWorker Series
Article Properties
Article Number: 000215827
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 06 Nov 2025
Version:  7
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