User accounts

Each device has a local administrator account used for console and SSH access. This page explains how its password is set and stored, and how to recover access if the password is lost.

The administrator account

The administrator account (admin) has the privileges needed to operate the device locally. For security, devices ship without a usable default password — the administrator password is something you set yourself, so there is no well-known credential to exploit.

Setting the password

You can set the administrator password:

  • at image creation, so it applies to every device built from that image, or
  • when preparing installation media, on a per-device basis.

The password must be non-empty. It is stored only as a salted hash on the device’s configuration storage — the plaintext password is never written to the device. When the configuration area is encrypted, the stored hash is protected at rest as well.

Resetting a lost password

Because the password is stored on the device’s configuration storage rather than inside the read-only system image, it can be reset:

  • by re-applying an administrator password to the device’s installation media, or
  • by re-imaging the device if you also want to reset the rest of its configuration.

If the device is reachable through the platform, you can also continue to operate it via remote access while you arrange a local password reset.

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