How to reset lost root password in Juniper EX Series Switch

January 24, 2013 Ghan Shyam Comments 777 comments

How to reset lost root password in Juniper EX Series Switch

It would be one of most extremely important experience to all who work with Juniper when one comes to set up either lost or forgotten password in Juniper EX Series Switches. Here, I am going to show the process for How to reset lost root password in Juniper EX Series Switch. The lost password can only be reset and recovered with console access of Switch. So, before going to actual activity, console cable is mandatory.

And the same process can be follow for the SRX and J Series devicess as well.

Firstly I am going to describe steps and then show details log of reset/recovering root password.

Follow the steps to rest lost root password in Juniper EX Series Switch

Connect the console cable from management system to Switch console port
Use the terminal emulation application such as TERA TERM, PuTTY, and Microsoft Windows HyperTerminal.
Configure the Serial port (COM) settings as below:

Bits per second: 9600

Data bits: 8

Parity: None

Stop bits: 1

Flow control: None

Power on the switch
Concentrate to the following console prompt output when it appears, press the Spacebar to access the switch’s bootstrap loader command prompt:

Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or space bar for command prompt.

Booting [kernel] in 1 second…

Then following prompt appears and type boot -s and enter to start up the system in single-user mode:
loader> boot -s
Now wait some little bit seconds and the following prompt appears where type recovery and enter to start the root password recovery procedure:
Enter full path name of shell or ‘recovery’ for root password recovery or RETURN for /bin/sh: recovery
Now there will be consistency checking, mounting of file systems and initialization and after that following CLI prompt appears.

root@EX3200-Switch>

Go to configuration mode by typing configure and set the root password with following command and enter to type the password as below;

root@EX3200-Switch# set system root-authentication plain-text-password

It prompts as blow to type new password. Enter the new password and press enter. Once gain it prompt to retype new password.

New password:

Retype new password:

Now save the Config with commit command and exit from configuration mode. Finally on exiting form Switch, it prompts to reboot the system as below and type y to reboot the system.

root@switch# commit

root@switch> exit

Reboot the system? [y/n] y

Details log for setting/recovering the lost root password

U-Boot 1.1.6 (Feb 6 2008 – 11:27:42)

Board: EX3200-24T 2.15

EPLD: Version 6.0 (0x85)

DRAM: Initializing (512 MB)

FLASH: 8 MB

USB: scanning bus for devices… 2 USB Device(s) found

scanning bus for storage devices… 1 Storage Device(s) found

Consoles: U-Boot console

Found compatible API, ver. 7

FreeBSD/PowerPC U-Boot bootstrap loader, Revision 2.1

(marcelm@apg-bbuild01.juniper.net, Wed Feb 6 11:23:55 PST 2008)

Memory: 512MB

Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf

/kernel data=0x8f8cbc+0xaad64 syms=[0x4+0x7bc30+0x4+0xb024e]

Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or space bar for command prompt.

Booting [/kernel] in 1 second…

Type ‘?’ for a list of commands, ‘help’ for more detailed help.

loader> boot -s

Kernel entry at 0x800000e0 …

GDB: no debug ports present

KDB: debugger backends: ddb

KDB: current backend: ddb

JUNOS 10.4R9.2 #0: 2012-02-02 07:48:00 UTC

builder@warth.juniper.net:/volume/build/junos/10.4/release/10.4R9.2/obj-powerpc/bsd/sys/compile/JUNIPER-EX

Timecounter “decrementer” frequency 37500000 Hz quality 0

cpu0: Freescale e500v2 core revision 2.2

cpu0: HID0 80004080<EMCP,TBEN,EN_MAS7_UPDATE>

real memory = 511705088 (488 MB)

avail memory = 500256768 (477 MB)

ETHERNET SOCKET BRIDGE initialising

Initializing EXSERIES platform properties …

nexus0: <PPC e500 Nexus device>

ocpbus0: <on-chip peripheral bus> on nexus0

openpic0: <OpenPIC in on-chip peripheral bus> iomem 0xfef40000-0xfef600b3 on ocpbus0

memctl0: <mpc85xx memory error reporting> iomem 0xfef20000-0xfef20e5b,0xfef02000-0xfef02e5b irq 32,34 on ocpbus0

ECC not enabled to report errors 0xc3000000

device_attach: memctl0 attach returned 6

i2c0: <MPC85XX OnChip i2c Controller> iomem 0xfef03000-0xfef03014 irq 59 on ocpbus0

i2c1: <MPC85XX OnChip i2c Controller> iomem 0xfef03100-0xfef03114 irq 59 on ocpbus0

uart0: <16550 or compatible> iomem 0xfef04500-0xfef0450f irq 58 on ocpbus0

uart0: console (9600,n,8,1)

uart1: <16550 or compatible> iomem 0xfef04600-0xfef0460f irq 58 on ocpbus0

lbc0: <Freescale 8533 Local Bus Controller> iomem 0xfef05000-0xfef05fff,0xff000000-0xffffffff irq 22 on ocpbus0

cfi0: <AMD/Fujitsu – 8MB> iomem 0xff800000-0xffffffff on lbc0

syspld0 iomem 0xff000000-0xff00ffff on lbc0

tsec0: <eTSEC ethernet controller> iomem 0xfef24000-0xfef24fff irq 45,46,50 on ocpbus0

tsec0: hardware MAC address 00:23:9c:18:19:ff

miibus0: <MII bus> on tsec0

e1000phy0: <Marvell 88E1112 Gigabit PHY> on miibus0

e1000phy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseTX-FDX, auto

pcib0: <Freescale MPC8544 PCI host controller> iomem 0xfef08000-0xfef08fff,0xf0000000-0xf3ffffff on ocpbus0

pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0

pci0: <serial bus, USB> at device 18.0 (no driver attached)

ehci0: <Philips ISP156x USB 2.0 controller> mem 0xf0001000-0xf00010ff irq 22 at device 18.2 on pci0

usb0: EHCI version 1.0

usb0: <Philips ISP156x USB 2.0 controller> on ehci0

usb0: USB revision 2.0

uhub0: Philips EHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1

uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered

umass0: STMicroelectronics ST72682 High Speed Mode, rev 2.00/2.10, addr 2

pcib1: <Freescale MPC8544 PCI Express host controller> iomem 0xfef0a000-0xfef0afff,0xe0000000-0xe3ffffff,0xec000000-0xec0fffff irq 42 on ocpbus0

pci1: <PCI bus> on pcib1

pcib2: <PCI-PCI bridge> at device 0.0 on pci1

pci2: <PCI bus> on pcib2

mpfe0: <Juniper EX-series Packet Forwarding Engine> mem 0xa4000000-0xa40fffff,0xa0000000-0xa3ffffff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci2

idma0: <mp85xxx DMA Controller> iomem 0xfef21000-0xfef21300 irq 36 on ocpbus0

Initializing product: 36 ..

bmeb: bmeb_lib_init done 0x81ee2000, addr 0x808fb37c

bme0:Virtual BME driver initializing

Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec

Loading the NETPFE picpeer module

IPsec: Initialized Security Association Processing.

da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0

da0: <ST ST72682 2.10> Removable Direct Access SCSI-2 device

da0: 40.000MB/s transfers

da0: 1000MB (2048000 512 byte sectors: 64H 32S/T 1000C)

Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/da0s1a

Attaching /packages/jbase via /dev/mdctl…

Mounted jbase package on /dev/md0…

System watchdog timer disabled

Enter full pathname of shell or ‘recovery’ for root password recovery or RETURN for /bin/sh: recovery

Performing filesystem consistency checks …

/dev/da0s1a: FILE SYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS

/dev/da0s1a: clean, 24457 free (41 frags, 3052 blocks, 0.0% fragmentation)

/dev/da0s4d: FILE SYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS

/dev/da0s4d: clean, 31588 free (44 frags, 3943 blocks, 0.1% fragmentation)

/dev/da0s3e: FILE SYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS

/dev/da0s3e: clean, 61507 free (179 frags, 7666 blocks, 0.3% fragmentation)

/dev/da0s3d: FILE SYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS

/dev/da0s3d: clean, 188830 free (22 frags, 23601 blocks, 0.0% fragmentation)

Performing mount of main filesystems …