Cisco WS-C3650-24PS admin account only has privilege level 1

[avandersteen]

Hello, 

I'm new to using Cisco switches. We were trying to chase down why one of our APs was offline and managed to determine its because the port on our C3650 switch was configured incorrectly. That wouldn't be an issue except the admin account on this switch that was setup was only set to privilege level 1, which as I understand doesn't allow for configuration changes, and sure enough on the webUI of the switch I can only see the homepage and monitoring tools. I can SSH into the switch but aren't able to change my own privilege. Short of resetting the switch and rebuilding the configuration is there a way around this?

[Torbjørn]

You can perform a password reset without removing the startup-config with the following procedure:

1. Boot the switch into rommon by holding the mode button while powering up the switch.
2. Run the "flash_init" command
3. Type SWITCH_IGNORE_STARTUP_CFG=1 and press enter
4. Run "boot flash:packages.conf"
5. Enter no when prompted for the initial configuration of the device.
6. Enter privileged exec mode with "enable"
7. Load the startup config with "copy startup-config running-config"
8. Enter global confguration mode with "configure terminal"
9. Create new user with "username {username} privilege 15 secret {yourpass}"
10. Exit configuration mode with "end"
11. Save configuration with new admin user with "write memory"

[avandersteen]

Thank you for the response. Does this affect anything connected to the switch or the switch's configurations? Would this cause any downtime on the switch? Thanks!

[Torbjørn · Accepted solution]

You will need to power off the switch for this since you must power on the switch with the mode button pressed to enter ROMMON. The configuration won't be affected, with the exception of the new admin user account. Just make sure that you type "no" when prompted for initial configuration and don't save the config before finishing all the steps.