Set Up Passwords for Root and Virtual Access

Passwords are provided as boot arguments to the installer, either manually when booting from CD or through PXE, or in the PXE boot target:

/home/pxeboot/pxelinux.cfg/default

You will need to set passwords to observe the installation using a virtual console or virtual network computing (VNC) viewer.

For maximum security, use the following password arguments at the CD boot: prompt:

• rootpw=des-crypted-password

  The rootpw=des-crypted-password argument enables SSH remote access on a PXE boot without passing a plain text password across the network.

  Create des-crypted-password using the following perl script:

  # perl -e ’print crypt("password","42"). "\n"’

  The string output is what to supply after the rootpw=argument.

• vncauth=hex-string

  This argument enables a password for VNC access.

  The remote VNC authorization file is eight binary bytes. You create those eight bytes with vncpasswd and then convert them to a hex-string to be entered here.

  Create the hex-string using the following commands:

# vncpasswd /tmp/vncauth
# od -t x1 /tmp/vncauth | awk ’/0000000/ \
{print $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9}’

The string output is what to supply after the vncauth=argument.

• ptextpass=password

  The ptextpass=password argument provides a way of passing a plain text password that is to be used for both the root password and the VNC password.