Walkthrough: Changing the root password for a set of systems

TrueSight Server Automation lets you design changes to server configurations and then deploy those changes simultaneously to multiple servers. For example, a common administrative task is changing the root password for Linux servers.

The topic includes the following sections:

Introduction
How to change the root password
Wrapping it up
Where to go next

The video at right demonstrates the steps in changing the root password on multiple servers.

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Introduction

In this example, we demonstrate how to change the root password for multiple Linux servers.

To accomplish this change, you browse a server to find the root password, package the password as a BLPackage, and modify the BLPackage by changing the value of the password. Finally, you deploy the BLPackage to target servers, which modifies the root password for those targets.

How to change the root password

For this walkthrough example, we have logged on as BLAdmin, the default superuser for TrueSight Server Automation.

	Procedure	Example screen
1	Browse the server objects for a UNIX-style server and select the UNIX Users object.
2	Right-click the root user and select Add To Depot As > BLPackage. The Create BLPackage wizard opens. In the wizard: For Package Name, assign a name, such as Change root password. For Save in, choose a depot folder to store the BLPackage. Click Finish.
3	In the depot folder, right-click the BLPackage you just created and select Open. The BLPackage opens for editing, at right.
4	Under BLPackage, select root. All assets for the selected object appear at right.
5	Click in the Password field. For Value, enter a new password. For Confirm, enter the password again. Select File > Save and then close the BLPackage you are editing. Note To enable the Password field, you may need set the Password State field to Empty or Disabled.
6	In the Depot folder, right-click the BLPackage you just modified, and select Deploy. The New Deploy Job wizard opens. Make the following entries on the General panel of the Deploy Job wizard: For Name, enter a name for the Deploy Job, such as Deploy root password. Enter a description for the job. For Save in, specify a folder in the Jobs folder where the job should be saved.
7	Click Next and then click Next again to display the Targets panel. Select the servers or server groups where you want to deploy the password change. In this example, we are deploying the change to a smart server group called Linux_All.
8	Click Next and then click Next again to display the Phases and Schedules panel. Select Execute Job Now. Click Finish. The job begins to execute.
9	To monitor the progress of the job, see the Jobs in Progress tab at bottom right. It shows jobs and other tasks that are currently active.
10	In the Jobs folder, navigate to the Deploy job you just created. Right-click the job and select Show Results. The job results show at right. A green check indicates success.