How to Hack ESXi Host to get Remote Console [SSH]

. Thursday, January 28, 2010

Here are the instructions for enabling SSH for ESXi host:

To enable SSH access in ESXi:

   1.      From the main screen on the ESXi host press Alt + F1.
   2.   At the next screen type:
      unsupported
      and give the root password when prompted.

   3.      Use a text editor to uncomment (that is, remove the hash symbol #) from the following line in the /etc/inetd.conf file, then save your changes:

      # ssh stream tcp nowait root /sbin/dropbearmulti dropbear –I

   4.      Restart the inetd process by running:
      # cat /var/run/inetd.pid
      # kill -HUP <pid>

   5.      Verify that the ESXi host is accessible by SSH. To do this from the SSH client, log in to the ESX host:

      ~ # dbclient root@server
      The output appears similar to:
      Host '<server>' is not in the trusted hosts file.
      (fingerprint md5 c8:28:e8:2b:97:0d:36:79:b2:62:03:5c:95:f4:b9:10)
      Do you want to continue connecting? (y/n) y

      root@server password:
      Tech Support Mode successfully accessed.