How to change WebSphere Application Server 9.0.0.x default/OOB wasadmin password without disabling global security?

Question

We created wasadmin id during WebSphere Application Server ND 9.0.0.x installs and need to lock down now by changing the password since application will be going live soon. We have deployer, operator roles configured/granted and set up using LDAP repository. All we need to do is change wasadmin password as part of the process. I came across few posts that talked about disabling global security and changing the password but that's not an option for us since we have ton of users configured via LDAP and don't want to mess it up or re-do all that work.

What are the recommended options to do this?

Thanks

Answer 1

It was actually simple and this would not involve disabling Global security and/or othe configuration changes.

Login as wasadmin user with existing password to WAS admin console. Then Click on User and Groups > Manage Users Click on "wasadmin" user in the list to edit. Enter the new password in the Password field and onfirm. Click OK and log out, now log back in with the new password. PS: you may want to change the password in soap.client.props as well in case you have an entry there, then run PropFilePasswordEncoder.sh utility to encode the password to prevent others to see the plain text password. On a side note the encoding utility is not that great since anyone can easily decode it online with a simple Google search. I am not sure what IBM recommendations are to truly protect wasadmin credentials.