You might come into the situation that you have to set up a NetScaler SDX, but you don’t have any passwords to access it. That can be in a situation where the SDX was already in use before or a predecessor has started to set it up but didn’t note down the passwords.
So what should you do insuch a situation and how is it possible to reset these passwords?
There are three different passwords you might need to reset:
You have to reset the passwords in that order.
So let’s start with the XenServer.
First you need to get access to the NetScaler Console Port. This can be done by connecting directly to the RS232 port or via LOM management. Then you have to reboot the NetScaler. During the start-up you will see the following:
Here you have to enter “menu.c32” and press enter. You just have about five seconds to do that. A boot prompt will then show up and you have to select “xe” and press enter. Again, you have just five seconds to do that.
At the bottom you will now see some boot entry information. You have to adjust them a little bit to boot into single user mode. Search for “console=tty0”, delete everything behind that till the “—“ and replace it with “linux single”.
Original
Modified
After the boot up is completed you see a command prompt (maybe you need to hit enter to get it). Just type “passwd” hit enter and enter the new password two times.
After that use the command “reboot” to restart the NetScaler. When the system is up again you can easily test your new password in the xsconsole. Go to “Local Command Shell”, press enter and you need to login with “root” account and your new password. Instead you can also use XenCenter directly to connect to the XenServer.
Now that you have access to the XenServer you can go and reset the password of the virtual instances. Start with the Management Service VM. The easiest way is by doing it via XenCenter and the console to the VM.
I hope the 5 seconds from the previous reset was not too hard, because for the next step you have only two seconds. Reboot the VM and when you see the text “Press [Ctrl-C] for command prompt” press Ctrl+C to interrupt the start-up sequence.
You will get to a command prompt (maybe you need to hit enter to see it). Here type “boot –s” to get into single user mode.
Now type the following three commands:
mount /dev/ad0s1a /flash (loads flash device) touch /flash/mpsconfig/.recover (do the password recover) reboot
After the reboot you can login with the initial user/password combination “nsroot/nsroot” again.
BTW: It is the same procedure for resetting the NetScaler Insight password. There is a video on Citrix TV available: https://video.citrix.com/tv/#videos/11658
For these there are a lot of manuals already available on the internet. So here is just the link to the one from Citrix: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX109006