first-boot.md

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Factory reset and the unclaimed camera

A camera with no root password is unclaimed: it streams nothing, answers nothing, and offers no shell until somebody sets one. Web interface covers what that means and how to set the password through the browser. This page is about the parts that catch people out — that a factory reset puts the camera back into that state, and that some doors cannot ask you for a password and so are refused outright.

Firmware built on or after 30 August 2026 (firmware#2342) ships root with an empty password field. There is no 12345 and no 123456 on a current image; a password published in a public repository is not a credential.

A factory reset returns the camera to unclaimed

These three are the same operation:

• System → Backup & Restore → Reset firmware in the web interface
• firstboot on the camera
• sysupgrade -n

All of them erase the overlay partition, and the root password lives in the overlay along with the network settings, the video settings and everything else you configured. So a reset camera comes back with no password, exactly as if it had just been flashed, and has to be claimed again before it streams or gives you a shell.

firstboot is literally sysupgrade -n, and -n on its own writes no firmware: downloading and flashing happen only when you also pass -k, -r, --url, --channel, --build or --archive. A reset erases the overlay and reboots, and that is all it does. (sysupgrade with no options at all does nothing but print the camera's identity — see Upgrade firmware.)

Reaching for 12345 after a reset is the most common way to run into this. It is not that the password is wrong — there is no password for it to be wrong against, and the connection you are being refused was never going to ask you for one. Do this instead:

ssh root@<camera-ip>

Send no password at all. The camera accepts the connection and runs a one-time prompt that asks you to choose one:

This camera has not been set up yet. It streams nothing and answers nothing
until root has a password -- set one now to finish setting it up. The same
password is used by the web interface, SSH, RTSP and ONVIF.

Changing password for root
New password:

Once it is set you land in a normal shell, and every login after that is an ordinary one. The serial console behaves identically: log in as root, no password is asked for, the same prompt runs.

If a client insists on sending a password, send an empty one.

scp, sftp and ssh camera command are refused

The prompt above is root's login shell, so it sits on the path of every door — including the ones that never show you anything to type into. A file copy or a remote command has no way to ask you for a password, so instead of a bare "permission denied" the camera explains itself:

This camera has not been set up yet, so it has no shell to offer.
Log in interactively (ssh root@camera, or the serial console),
or open http://camera/ in a browser, to set a root password.

This is what WinSCP, scp, rsync, ansible and any provisioning script will hit on a camera nobody has claimed yet. Claim it first — interactively over SSH, or on the setup page — and they all work normally afterwards.

Anything that assumed root:12345 on a fresh camera needs the same treatment: flashing lines, CI, NVR onboarding, and any third-party guide that still hands out those credentials. There is no default password to script against, by design.

Cameras deliberately run with no password

An empty root password used to mean "authentication off", and some cameras were deliberately left that way (passwd -d root) to serve open RTSP. That meaning is now inverted — empty means unclaimed — so such a camera stops streaming.

The setting that has always meant "serve without authentication" is system.unsafe: true in /etc/majestic.yaml; see Majestic streamer. Claim the camera, then turn it on. It is deliberately not applied for you, because silently keeping a camera open would defeat the point of the change. It opens every endpoint to anyone who can reach the port, so it belongs on an isolated bench and nowhere else.

Forgotten the password?

There is no recovery over the network, and that is the point of it. Reset the camera to factory state and claim it again — from the web interface, from a shell with firstboot, or, if you cannot reach the camera at all, by erasing the overlay partition from the bootloader over a serial console. The FAQ entry How to reset password for SSH/Web UI? has the sf erase addresses.