Reset VM Password

Overview

If for some reason you cannot SSH into your VM using your Linux admin user (e.g. azureuser), you can reset your credentials via the Azure Portal.

Reset your credentials with the Reset Password tool

The Reset Password tool in the Azure Portal lets you update the credentials of Linux admin users, as well as create new users.

Under the VM details page, go to Reset password.

This page gives you the option to reset your password or SSH public key.

You can also create a new Linux admin user, as long as you specify a new username.

Note: Be careful not to select Reset configuration only, because this will wipe out the SFTP Gateway specific settings in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.

Video Reference

Troubleshooting

If the Reset Password tool is not working properly, there are a couple of things you can check.

Python version

The Reset Password feature in the Azure Portal relies on the pre-installed enablevmaccess Linux extension. However, this extension requires Python, which may not be configured properly on earlier versions of SFTP Gateway 3.x.

In this section, you will verify whether Python is installed, and install it if necessary.

In the VM details page, open the Run Command tab from the left side menu.

Click on RunShellScript. This opens a modal that lets you submit Bash commands.

Type in the following command:

python --version

Click Run

It will take a minute or two for the script to execute.

If you see the Python version (e.g. Python 3.6.8) in the standard output (i.e. [stdout]), you can skip to the next section.

Otherwise, run the following commands:

dnf install python3
rm -f /usr/bin/python3
alternatives --set python3 /usr/bin/python3.6
alternatives --set python /usr/bin/python3

These commands install Python 3 on the VM. You should see the following output:

Once Python is installed, return to the VM Overview page, and Restart the VM. The Reset Password tool will not work until this Restart has taken place.

Disk space

To check your disk space, use the Run Command utility in the Azure Portal to run this command:

df -h

If the root partition is full, the Linux agent will not be able to perform the necessary commands to reset credentials. If this is the case, you will need to poke around the file system and find files (e.g. large log files in /var/log/) to delete in order to free up some space.