Installing vCenter 5.5 fails with Invalid Credentials

07 October 2013 Jarret Lavallee

Recently I was doing a deployment in my lab with vCenter 5.5 and ran into a small issue. After installing vCenter Single Sign On (SSO), I went to install the vSphere Web Client which failed with the Error 29103. The provided credentials are not valid. Please check VM_ssoreg.log in the system temporary folder for details. This could happen with the vCenter Inventory service as well.

The message indicates that I gave it the wrong password for the [email protected]. Naturally I could have mistyped i,t so I tried it again only to find the same error. As the error says, we should check the VM_ssoreg.log to see more details on the error. VM_ssoreg.log can be found in the local data on the server. In my case this is C:\Users\jarret\AppData\Local\Temp. The bottom of the log shows the issue.

[2013-10-07 16:40:01,203 main  DEBUG com.vmware.vim.install.impl.AdminServiceAccess] Creating client for SSO Admin on address: https://VC.moopless.com:7444/sso-adminserver/sdk/vsphere.local
[2013-10-07 16:40:03,115 main  ERROR com.vmware.vim.sso.client.impl.SoapBindingImpl] SOAP fault
javax.xml.ws.soap.SOAPFaultException: Invalid credentials
    at com.sun.xml.internal.ws.fault.SOAP11Fault.getProtocolException(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.xml.internal.ws.fault.SOAPFaultBuilder.createException(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.xml.internal.ws.client.dispatch.DispatchImpl.doInvoke(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.xml.internal.ws.client.dispatch.DispatchImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at com.vmware.vim.sso.client.impl.SoapBindingImpl.sendMessage(SoapBindingImpl.java:130)
    at com.vmware.vim.sso.client.impl.SoapBindingImpl.sendMessage(SoapBindingImpl.java:81)
    at com.vmware.vim.sso.client.impl.SecurityTokenServiceImpl$RequestResponseProcessor.sendRequest(SecurityTokenServiceImpl.java:767)
    at com.vmware.vim.sso.client.impl.SecurityTokenServiceImpl$RequestResponseProcessor.executeRoundtrip(SecurityTokenServiceImpl.java:697)
    at com.vmware.vim.sso.client.impl.SecurityTokenServiceImpl.acquireToken(SecurityTokenServiceImpl.java:123)
    at com.vmware.vim.install.impl.AdminServiceAccess.acquireSamlToken(AdminServiceAccess.java:297)
    at com.vmware.vim.install.impl.AdminServiceAccess.<init>(AdminServiceAccess.java:187)
    at com.vmware.vim.install.impl.AdminServiceAccess.createDiscover(AdminServiceAccess.java:238)
    at com.vmware.vim.install.impl.RegistrationProviderImpl.<init>(RegistrationProviderImpl.java:57)
    at com.vmware.vim.install.RegistrationProviderFactory.getRegistrationProvider(RegistrationProviderFactory.java:143)
    at com.vmware.vim.install.RegistrationProviderFactory.getRegistrationProvider(RegistrationProviderFactory.java:60)
    at com.vmware.vim.install.cli.commands.CommandArgumentsParser.createServiceProvider(CommandArgumentsParser.java:241)
    at com.vmware.vim.install.cli.commands.CommandArgumentsParser.parseCommand(CommandArgumentsParser.java:101)
    at com.vmware.vim.install.cli.commands.CommandFactory.createRegisterSolutionCommand(CommandFactory.java:114)
    at com.vmware.vim.install.cli.RegTool.process(RegTool.java:107)
    at com.vmware.vim.install.cli.RegTool.main(RegTool.java:38)
[2013-10-07 16:40:03,118 main  DEBUG com.vmware.vim.install.impl.AdminServiceAccess] Provided credentials are not valid.
[2013-10-07 16:40:03,118 main  ERROR com.vmware.vim.install.cli.commands.CommandArgumentsParser] Cannot authenticate user
[2013-10-07 16:40:03,120 main  INFO  com.vmware.vim.install.cli.RegTool] Return code is: InvalidCredentials

Unfortunately the issue is as the other error claimed, the credentials are invalid. Luckily I remembered that there was a similar issue with the SSO installation in vSphere 5.5, where if you had special characters in the password the installation would fail with the generic Error 29133. Administrator login error., Error 29102: An invalid argument was provided, or Error 29158.Node package creation error errors. The KB for that issue is here.In this case I had a special character in the password that was interfering with the SSO registration. Likely it does not sanitize the input and just fails the registration.

I went back and reinstalled SSO with a password as recommended and everything worked out alright. Just remember to use a special character, as is required, but not to use any of the following.

*
$
;
“
‘
)
<
&
\
_
A trailing ” ” space
Non-ASCII characters

Installing vCenter 5.5 fails with Invalid Credentials

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