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Cisco Intrusion Prevention System Sensor CLI Configuration Guide for IPS 7.2
OL-29168-01
Chapter1 7 Administrative Tasks for the Sensor
Clearing the Sensor Databases
Step 3
To disable password recovery, uncheck the Allow Password Recovery check box.

Verifying the State of Password Recovery

Use the show settings | include password command to verify whether password recovery is enabled.
To verify whether password recovery is enabled, follow these steps:
Step 1
Log in to the CLI.
Step 2
Enter service host submode.
sensor# configure terminal
sensor (config)# service host
sensor (config-hos)#
Step 3
Verify the state of password recovery by using the include keyword to show settings in a filtered output.
sensor(config-hos)# show settings | include password
password-recovery: allowed <defaulted>
sensor(config-hos)#

Troubleshooting Password Recovery

When you troubleshoot password recovery, pay attention to the following:
You cannot determine whether password recovery has been disabled in the sensor configuration
from the ROMMON prompt, GRUB menu, switch CLI, or router CLI. If you attempt password
recovery, it always appears to succeed. If it has been disabled, the password is not reset to cisco. The
only option is to reimage the sensor.
You can disable password recovery in the host configuration. For the platforms that use external
mechanisms, such as ROMMON, although you can run commands to clear the password, if
password recovery is disabled in the IPS, the IPS detects that password recovery is not allowed and
rejects the external request.
To check the state of password recovery, use the show settings | include password command.
Clearing the Sensor Databases
Caution
We do not recommend that you use clear database command unless under the direction of TAC or in
some testing conditions when you need to clear accumulated state information and start with a clean
database.
Use the clear database [virtual-sensor] all | nodes | alerts | inspectors command in privileged EXEC
mode to clear specific parts of the sensor database. The clear database command is useful for
troubleshooting and testing.