the birdhouse in my soul

Several years ago, I created a list of ESXi versions with matching VM BIOS identifiers. The list is now complete up to vSphere 7. Your Linux runs on a VMware VM, but on which ESXi version? Even without access to the host nor vCenter, you can see for yourself: run "dmidecode" and look at lines 10, 11 and 12. The BIOS release date, the address and the runtime size are unique for each ESXi version. Starting from 7.0 U3, no address and size is reported, and the "Phoenix Technologies LTD" name changed to "VMware, Inc.". Look up your result in the following table: ESXi version   BIOS release date   Address   Size ESX 2.5 04/21/2004 0xE8480 97152 bytes ESX 3.0 04/17/2006 0xE7C70 99216 bytes ESX 3.5 01/30/2008 0xE7910 100080 bytes ESX 4 08/15/2008 0xEA6C0 88384 bytes ESX 4U1 09/22/2009 0xEA550 88752 bytes ESX 4.1 10/13/2009 0xEA2E0 89376 bytes ESXi 5 01/07/2011 0xE72C0 101696 bytes ESXi 5.1 06/22/2012 0xEA0C0 89920 bytes ESXi 5.5 07...

VMware's solution to a lost or forgotten root password for ESXi is simple: go to  https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1317898?lang=en_US  and you'll find that "Reinstalling the ESXi host is the only supported way to reset a password on ESXi". If your host is still connected to vCenter, you may be able to use Host Profiles to reset the root password, or alternatively you can join ESXi in Active Directory via vCenter, and log in with a user in the "ESX Admins" AD group. If your host is no longer connected to vCenter, those options are closed. Can you avoid reinstallation? Fortunately, you can. You will need to reset and reboot your ESXi though. If you're ready for an unsupported deep dive into the bowels of ESXi, follow these steps: Create a bootable Linux USB-drive (or something else you can boot your server with). I used a CentOS 7 installation USB-drive that I could use to boot into rescue mode. Reset your ESXi and boot from the Linux medium. Ident...