Locked out of legacy on-prem Confluence 6.3.1 after SAML cert expired – recovery options?

[Devin Thomas]

We are locked out of a legacy on-prem Confluence instance (version 6.3.1) after our SAML certificate expired.

This instance is no longer actively used day-to-day, but was intentionally kept online for historical/reference access. We now have an updated, cloud-hosted Confluence environment, however we still need limited access to the legacy system.

Once the SAML certificate expired, authentication to the on-prem Confluence stopped working and we no longer have admin access. At this point there is no available login path back into the system.

Has anyone successfully recovered admin access in this scenario, or can advise on the recommended recovery approach for legacy on-prem Confluence when SAML authentication is no longer valid?

Any guidance or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

[Mirek]

Hi @Devin Thomas 

Yes, that is pretty old version already :) 

Not sure which operating system you are using but I would try first with "recovery mode". In old version procedure was different than in new one 

https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf64/restore-passwords-to-recover-admin-user-rights-936511358.html

You then can also try to go to plugin directoy which is 
<confluence-install>/confluence/WEB-INF/atlassian-bundled-plugins/
or 
<confluence-install>/confluence/WEB-INF/lib/

and try to identify SAML jar (something like that) - temporary disable it by renaming it to *.jar.something 

and then maybe it is also good idea to clean up plugin cache  
<confluence-home>/plugins-cache/*
<confluence-home>/plugins-osgi-cache/*
<confluence-home>/plugins-temp/*

and try to start Confluence.. see how it goes.. 

Hope it helps somehow :)