Proxmox VE v.9 and the hyphen in the password

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fmondini

New Member
Oct 31, 2025
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Northern Italy
Hello everyone.
Today is Halloween and I have a "spooky" question... :)

I just installed Proxmox VE version 9 on a Lenovo SR650 test server, and I noticed something strange about the root password handling.

Here's what happened:
  • I installed VE from a USB stick and entered Root-TestPass (note the hyphen) as the root password.
    Once installed, I logged in from the web interface and everything worked fine.
  • I SSHed in remotely as root and tried the password I just entered, but it said it was invalid.
    So I added my SSH key to the authorized_keys file and tried again. Now I'm logged in.
  • Thinking I'd done something wrong, I ran passwd as root and forced the password to Root-TestPass.
    I tried it externally via SSH, and it worked.
  • I returned to the web interface and attempted to log in: it was denied.
    I tried again externally with SSH: everything worked.
    I'm starting to suspect that some character in the password isn't being interpreted correctly.
  • I went back into SSH and used passwd to force the password to Root.TestPass (note the dot instead of the hyphen).
  • I went back to the web login and now I can log in.
  • I went back into SSH and the password works again.
So... It seems like something is preventing the hyphen from being used in the password.
I haven't tried all the other characters, but it seems like the hyphen is the only one that's affected.

Does anyone have any information on this issue?

Thanks everyone...
Fulvio.
 
Welcome to the Forum, fmondini!
I wonder if that was the same hyphen in both cases...
Maybe the one was the real ASCII hyphen, and the second was some UTF junky hyphen?... (For instance some dash sign).
 
Last edited:
Thank you for the warm welcome, Onslow.

Nice try... :cool: but the character used in both cases is the hyphen on the numeric keypad, the usual ASCII code 45, and the error is reproducible with any password containing it.

I'm starting to think that the password was passed from the web to the system, but that the hyphen is understood by Debian as an option separator, or something similar. It must be something silly like that, otherwise I can't explain it.
 
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