Friday 12 July 2019

Can't log in to VCSA 6.7 after updates like U2a

After up upgrading VCSA 6.7 to U2 I could not access the VCSA UI, in fact the upgrade seemed to be stuck at 0% even thought I knew it had finished and was fine.

I tried the password reset procedure but that did not work.

Here is what I did to fix it.

Reboot the VCSA and press E https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147144

Edit the boot strap to include rw init=/bin/bash 

Press F10 to continue the boot.

Once you are in edit passwd with vi /etc/passwd

change
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/applicancesh
to 
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

:wq (to write and quit)

reboot -f

Once VCSA reloads to the shell, type:

#systemctl list-unit-files

You can see the applmgmt.service is in "Masked" status

#systemctl unmask applmgmt

unmask it

#systemctl list-unit-files


check it again and should see applmgmt.service turned into Enabled status and should start correctly automatically after reboot.