Have you looked in "config.dat" according to this it may appear there in plain text. (granted, they are talking about web console).
It seems like you may have already seen this but I'll reference it just in case. The format they use for password stored in local.ini includes spaces -> "username = password" Also they recommend running the command 'ls -alR /opt/couchbase-server/etc' to help figure out where your problem might be. Perhaps you can post your output for that command here if the last two suggestions don't work out.