Logging in to the appliance command line

Certain features of BMC Discovery need command line access to configure. For example, the appliance obtains its IP address using DHCP by default, although you can configure it at the command line to use a static IP address.

Default command line passwords

BMC Discovery is configured with the following default command line user accounts and passwords.

• root—tidewayroot
• tideway—tidewayuser
• netadmin—No password configured. For more information, see the netadmin user.
• upload—No password configured. You cannot log in as the upload user, it is only intended for loading scanner files onto the appliance. For more information, see the upload user.

The first time you log in to the appliance UI, you are forced to change the UI system user password and the passwords for the tideway and root command line users. To change the command line user passwords subsequently, log in using the VMware Server Console, or ssh into the appliance using a terminal. (You cannot ssh into the appliance as the root user. You must first log in as the tideway user and su to root.)

Password quality

The default requirements for command line passwords are that they must have at least one lowercase letter, one uppercase letter, one numeric character, and one special character. They must also contain a minimum of six characters, at least four characters must have been changed against the last password, and there must be no more than three repeated characters.

To change the root and tideway passwords

1. As the root user, use the passwd command to change the password.

2. Enter a new password when prompted.
   An example session is shown below:

   # passwd
   Changing password for user root.
   New UNIX password: 
   Retype new UNIX password:
   passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
   # 

When you enter the new password, it is not echoed to the screen.

1. Still logged in as the root user, change the tideway user's password using the passwd command and specifying the tideway user.

2. Enter a new password when prompted.

   An example session is shown below:

   # passwd tideway
   Changing password for user tideway.
   New UNIX password: 
   Retype new UNIX password:
   passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
   # 

   The passwords are changed.

The root user

The root user has unlimited privileges on the appliance and should be used only for the following tasks:

• Changing the default Linux passwords
• Upgrading the BMC Discovery application software
• Adding new disks to the appliance

Any other task on the appliance that typically requires a UNIX/Linux root user can be undertaken using sudo to temporarily grant additional privileges to the tideway user.

The tideway user

The tideway user is a powerful administrative account that can perform all of the tasks that would need to be undertaken using the command line. Examples of such tasks are:

• All command line utilities
• Customizations (taxonomy, reports, and visualizations)
• Managing log files (although this can be done through the UI)
• Starting and stopping services (with additional privileges accessed through sudo)

Access to the tideway user should be controlled in the same way as the root user.