Windows Splunk - difficulty changing default password from CLI

[s6a9d6u9s]

I'm working on some scripts to install Splunk and configure several things right off the bat, under several different OS's. For some reason the Windows splunk client is behaving differently than the Linux one.

After a fresh Splunk install, when I try to change the default password, I'm getting the following error:

> "C:\Program Files\Splunk\bin\splunk.exe" edit user 'admin' -password '(random pass)' -role Admin -auth 'admin:changeme'
Login failed
Login failed

If I run that same command again but leave off the -auth section, so it prompts me for a username/password, it is rejecting admin:changeme on the CLI.

> "C:\Program Files\Splunk\bin\splunk.exe" edit user 'admin' -password '(random pass)' -role Admin
Your session is invalid.  Please login.
Splunk username: admin
Password:
In handler 'users': Could not get info for non-existent user: 'admin'

I can however log into the web interface as admin:changeme, oddly enough.

Come to think of it, on the Linux side I am starting splunk up with "--accept-license --answer-yes" before changing the password, however I haven't been trying to do that in Windows since it's running as a service OK. Is that the catch?

Thanks!

[gkanapathy]

bwooden is correct that you would be better off loading user-seed.conf into the install prior to first run for scripted installs. But your problem is that you're using the single quotes (') around your arguments. Windows does not use those to quote arguments. Unless you have spaces within the user name or password, you should just leave the quotes off. If you do have spaces, then you should use double-quotes ("), not single quotes ('), at the Windows CLI.

[bwooden]

For a scripted install you may find it easier to use the user-seed.conf to change admin's password on initial startup.