IBM Support

Resetting the hscroot account on a Power HMC

Question & Answer


Question

If my hscroot password is lost how can I reset access? 

Answer

The supported method to recover from a lost hscroot password is to log in as another user with HMCSuperAdmin authority and change the hscroot password. The next best method is to use the pesh process to become root and run "chhmcusr -u hscroot -t passwd" to change the hscroot user password. However, this only works if the hscpe user exists and its password is known, and the root (not hscroot) user's password is known. The root password is passw0rd (the o is a zero 0) by default, unless the customer has changed it after install.

Otherwise, the supported method for recovering from a lost hscroot password is to reinstall and reconfigure the HMC from scratch. See "Reinstalling a Power HMC".
If a backup was taken where passwords are known, then that can be installed after scratch installation to speed up the reconfiguration. If another HMC is on the network, data replication can be used if there is no backup to speed up some of the configuration needed after reinstallation. See "Data replication best practices".

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Document Information

Modified date:
19 May 2025

UID

ibm17233870