I have a ESXi 6.7 install, where logging in via the Web UI does not work.
The user is root, and password is 20 characters ASCII. I have encountered the same issue previously, and in that instance I manually verified the hash by extracting the config bundle, and encrypting the password I was believed to be correct with the salt from shadow file, and the hash was identical.
Login via SSH saved me at that time.
However, now I have a host which does not have ssh enabled, and I have no direct console access.
Logging the requests, the password is sent in a request to /sdk/, which returns with status 500 Error. The returned data is as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<soapenv:Body>
<soapenv:Fault><faultcode>ServerFaultCode</faultcode><faultstring>Cannot complete login due to an incorrect user name or password.</faultstring><detail><InvalidLoginFault xmlns="urn:vim25" xsi:type="InvalidLogin"></InvalidLoginFault></detail></soapenv:Fault>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>
The request:
<Envelope xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"><Body><Login xmlns="urn:vim25"><_this type="SessionManager">ha-sessionmgr</_this><userName>root</userName><password>actual_password</password><locale>en-US</locale></Login></Body></Envelope>
Has anyone expirienced similar problems with ESXi 6.7.0? I have found similar descriptions from other people, for 6.5.