CSSM Default SSH account, Default HTTP or HTTPS Account upon install of ISO

[Chris Schroeder]

Installing the SSM (SSM_On-Prem_8-202006.iso) on VMWare.   (Incidentally I had this exact same problem on VirtualBox).

Installed the SSM ISO successfully.   The installer asks me for ip/mask/gate, what kind of security banner I wanted, etc, then it asks me for a password.  The password has to follow a certain level of difficulty, which it only tells you PART of when it fails to accept what you meticulously typed twice.

Anyway, once you've figured out all the obscure password rules it wants and you come up with a password it deigns to accept, it then proceeds with the rest of the installation.

So.   Now I have a SSM installed.  I can SSH to it and get an login prompt.  When I enter my username as admin and I type in the password I entered on the initial setup text screen (above) it lets me into a BASH shell prompt, USER LEVEL.  No mention of what the root level password is or when - or IF - it will ever be used.   "su" for superuser and entering the same password (as above) does not work even though under user level I am logged in as "admin".   No documentation I've found talks about this ssh interface at all, if one exists.  BUT IT LET ME LOG IN, so the password I created in the SSM setup screen MUST be OK right?

No matter.  What i want is the web interface!  Right?  RIGHT!

So, I go to http://myipaddress:8443/admin

(YES, I tried both http and https, they both return the same apparently functional screen)

I am presented with a web GUI that contains three elements - a username field, a password field and a submit button.  I type 

in the username: admin

...then I type the password I entered at the beginning that ALREADY WORKED, MIND YOU, on the SSH interface.   It says "The requested user is not found."   I try again.   It fails.   I try again, cutting and pasting this long password directly from my password storage.  I try the password I created again on the SSH session.   It WORKS.   It doesn't give me root authority (#) but it lets me log in with that password as "admin".   I try it again on the HTTP interface (using Chrome, FireFox and Edge).  ALL fail.  ALL say "The requested user is not found."

I repeat the entire installation process from scratch using the ISO file (mentioned above) and specifying ip, gate, password, etc...

Same result.

Can someone please help me with what sort of strange thing I might be missing?  Thanks in advance.

[Justin Sprake · Accepted solution]

I can't say I've had much interaction with On-Prem Satellite these days, but I've noted in the past that the CLI and GUI credentials are always separate. Additionally, the default admin password was provided within the earlier User guides:

https://www.cisco.com/web/software/286285517/146140/Smart_Software_Manager_satellite_Enhanced_Edition_6.3.0_User_Guide.pdf

I see that the documentation has changed to reflect a large number of design changes between versions 6.x and 8.x, without having the latest version of the software in front of me I cannot comment on whether the workflow is the same and the documentation differs (if that is the case we can request it be updated):

https://www.cisco.com/web/software/286285517/151968/Smart_Software_Manager_On-Prem_8_User_Guide.pdf

I do believe that the best community page to discuss this with On-Prem SMEs will be with the NMS forum below: 

https://community.cisco.com/t5/network-management/bd-p/5931-discussions-network-management

[Chris Schroeder]

Thank you.   I found out by working with TAC this morning that the file that contains the initial web-interface password is in a document that is NOT included on the Software Download page for SSM at:

https://software.cisco.com/download/home/286285506/type/286285517/os/Linux/release/8-202006

This software download page for the current version of SSM contains two documentation (pdf) files linked on the same page.  One is for "quick installation" and the second is the supposedly "full" documentation for the software.   The initial password for the web interface after installation is NOT contained in either of these documents (which I personally found extremely annoying) but it is found on a document called the "installation guide", which is found here:

https://www.cisco.com/web/software/286285517/152313/Smart_Software_Manager_On-Prem_8-202006_Installation_Guide.pdf

Thanks for your help and maybe this will help someone else avoid the hours of frustration I went through under the assumption that the password I entered in the initial text configuration (where you configure IP, mask and gateway) is the same used for the web interface.  It is NOT.  Look to the "installation guide" linked above for the correct web initial password.

Incidentally, the initial URL should be:    https://yourserverip:8443/admin

There's a lot of old documentation floating around out there for previous versions that used different methodologies and even different initial passwords so be careful.