Resetting Password on Cisco 9300 Switch

The following are the higher levels of steps to reset the password.

Connect the console cable and reload the switch

Press the mode button to force the switch to boot into the boot loader.

Ignore the startup-config

Reset the password

Reload the switch

Connect the console cable and reload the switch

The first step is to connect the console cable to the switch and then perform a reload by pulling the power code from the switch. The 'Mode' button

As soon as you reload the switch, press the mode button multiple times until the switch goes into bootloader mode. Please ensure the following message is displayed on the console. boot from [flash:packages.conf] is interrupted

Ignore the startup-config

Please remember the password you configured is stored in the startup-config so, to bypass the password requirements, we need to instruct the switch to ignore the startup-config and boot from the factory default config.

Please enter SWITCH_IGNORE_STARTUP_CFG=1 and boot on the switch: prompt. The switch will then boot into its default factory setting.

Reset the password

The next step is to load the startup-config (actual device configuration) into the running-config and reset the password.

Once you configured the new password, copy the running-config (which has the new password) into the startup-config.

Please remember we instructed the switch to ignore the startup-config on the previous step, we need to revert that change, otherwise, the switch will keep ignoring the startup-config on the subsequent reloads.

Reload the Switch

This is optional but I wanted to make sure there are no surprises on the next reload so, decided to perform a reload and make sure everything is working as expected.

A few things to consider

After reloading the switch, I was getting connection refused message when trying to SSH. I had to regenerate the SSH keys on the switch using the crypto key generate rsa modulus 2048 command. So, please keep this in mind if you come across any issues.

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