Reset VMware ESXi root password

By arizVMWare

If you need to reset the root password of your ESXi host, follow the steps 🙂

  1. Check with parted the partitions
  2. Mount the corresponding partition (the first after the boot partition) and unzip the state.tgz directory . The shadow file can be opened with an editor
  3. Between the first two colons is the encrypted root password
  4. Delete all characters between the first two colons and save the change
  5. Create the local.tgz archive again and then the state.tgz archive and move it to the Mount Path
  6. You can log in as root on the vSphere Host now without a password

ref: https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/Reset_VMware_ESXi_root_password