Why is there a default master password in payara-6.2023.11.zip; and what is it?

Technical Discussion
1

Hi all

I am starting to migrate from payara-5 to payara-6, but hitting a snag right at the beginning.

When I try and do a simple:

asadmin start-domain

On a clean unzipped instance its asking for a master password. I have tried “changeit” and “admin” but its not working.

When I do the the same with the latest glasfish-7 release its like it always used to be and just starts.

Any ideas?

Regards
Rainer

1 Like
2

I have the same problem. For some reason, this error does not appear, if I run this Payara on Java 21 or 24… but then a SSL error appears later on.

I can confirm that neither “changeit” nor “admin” do work.

3

Hello Rainer and rk_imunixx,
I tried it just now: downloaded current version (6.2024.9) and started with Java 11:

payara6/bin$ JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/ AS_JAVA=/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk-amd64/ ./asadmin start-domain
Waiting for domain1 to start .....
Successfully started the domain : domain1
domain  Location: /home/aubi/programs/javaee/payara/payara6/glassfish/domains/domain1
Log File: /home/aubi/programs/javaee/payara/payara6/glassfish/domains/domain1/logs/server.log
Admin Port: 4848
Command start-domain executed successfully.

Did you switch on Secure Admin? It fails, if admin has empty password. When you try it, it requires old password, which is empty.

Secure Admin failing with empty password:

./asadmin enable-secure-admin
remote failure: At least one admin user has an empty password, which secure admin does not permit. Use the change-admin-password command or the admin console to create non-empty passwords for admin accounts.
Command enable-secure-admin failed.

Entering the password. Keep default username (admin) and empty admin password. Enter new password:

./asadmin change-admin-password
Enter admin user name [default: admin]>
Enter the admin password> 
Enter the new admin password> 
Enter the new admin password again> 
Command change-admin-password executed successfully.

./asadmin enable-secure-admin
Authentication failed with password from login store: /home/aubi/.gfclient/pass
Enter admin password for user "admin"> 
You must restart all running servers for the change in secure admin to take effect.
Command enable-secure-admin executed successfully.

The password “changeit” is used as a default password for keystores or as a master password.

Did you change the domain somehow? Like copying old one from Payara 5?

If this doesn’t help, use the latest Payara and try to send exact commands, which you do and what Payara reports, eventually with parts of log.

Regards,
Petr