Azure Regain sudo/su Access

Question

While trying to install a GUI application today I found myself having to disable waagent. Turns out the NetworkManager packages are not compatible with waagent. A few, obviously outdated, posts on the Microsoft forums had me run the following process to get the packages to install:

# yum remove WALinuxAgent

# yum install NetworkManager

... do desktop installs ...

# yum remove NetworkManager

# yum install WALinuxAgent

/usr/sbin/waagent --install

So I did that.

Now I can no longer access root or any sudo commands from my default login.

Without higher level privs I cannot perform any of the "fixes" that are noted in multiple forum posts.

Any way to find a hint as to what the default root password is on my Azure CentOS 6.4 image? Or how to restore sudo access to my default login with no sudo commands?

Is this image hosed? It is running but without elevated privs it is kind of useless as I cannot maintain the system.

Suggestions?

Answer 1

After multiple discussions, at length, with a senior Azure engineer at Microsoft, the bottom line is "the image is hosed". Because of the way the CentOS (and other Linux) images are built, if you lose the waagent without deprovisioning it first, you will obliterate all access to an elevated privilege account.

Microsoft's Azure team has bumped the request to allow for console level access to the Linux images, but there is no ETA or even a confirmation that this feature will ever be considered.

For now the only answer is "rebuild the system on a new image".