I recently acquired another Dell C2100 for my lab only to find out that the password on the BMC had been changed from the default root/root combo and I had no clue what the previous owner set it to. As it turns out, you cannot reset the credentials on the BMC via the BIOS or during the boot process (CTRL + E) like you can with many BMC/DRAC’s. After a little bit of googling I found out that it is possible to reset the root account via IPMI commands from the local host, but it wasn’t the most straight forward process (mainly due to finding something that would run IPMITool) so I figured I’d post up the steps needed in case anyone else was looking to do something similar. I would think this also works on similar servers like the Dell C6100.

Resetting the Root Password using Linux and IPMITool

1. Install a Linux OS of your choice, I used Ubuntu Desktop 16.10 x64 and installed it via a bootable USB drive that I created using the ISO image and Rufus. IPMITool has to be run locally on the server to reset the account without authenticating.

   Note: I tried to use the bootable versions of both Kali 2016.2 and Ubuntu Desktop 16.10 but was unable to install the IPMITool package. Once I installed the OS to a local drive I had no issues.

2. Install IPMITool:
   user@c2100:~$ sudo apt-get install ipmitool
3. Reset the root account password:
   user@c2100:~$ sudo ipmitool user set password 2 newpasswordgoeshere

   Note: The number 2 refers to the User ID #2 which is the root account.

   

4. Log into the BMC by browsing to http://IP-ADDRESS-OF-BMC-SET-IN-BIOS/ using the user account root with the password that was set via the previous command.