Unable to login as admin

[Gabriel Meyer]

I've been able to login when I first restored the site and everything was working, but today when I tried to login as admin, it tells me that I have to answer the CAPTCHA question correctly.  I've done this several times and still cannot get in.

I know the password is correct because I even manually reset it using a mysql query (update cwd_user set credential='newpassword' where user_name='admin';)

I've cleared the cache/cookies, restarted JIRA, used incognito mode, everything! 

How can I disable CAPTCHA and make sure the user failed login attempts is set to 0?

[Laura Holton _ACE Manchester_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Gabriel Meyer 👋

As an administrator, you may find yourself locked out of Jira because:

• You've imported a site from Cloud, and it does not contain a system administrator account.
• You've forgotten the password to the administrator account, and don't have access to the email address associated with it.
• You're using an external directory or Jira for user management, have disabled the built in user management, and your external directory is not currently available. 
• You need to make a change to the configuration of an external user directory in Jira while that directory is not available. 

In any of these situations you can use recovery mode to restore administrator access to Jira. 

Use recovery mode to restore access

Recovery mode works by creating a virtual user directory with a temporary admin account. You set the password for this admin account when applying the system property.  Users can continue to log in and access Jira while it is in recovery mode.

To recover administrator user rights:

1. Stop all Jira nodes.

2. Add the following parameter to each available node according to the steps from the Setting properties and options on startup KB article, based on the method that's being used to start Jira:

   JVM_SUPPORT_RECOMMENDED_ARGS=-Datlassian.recovery.password='<your-password>'

   This is generally applied in the setenv.sh or setenv.bat file (depending on your operating system type) in the <jira_install>/bin directory. 

3. Start your Jira nodes.  You may need to start them manually with the start-jira.sh or start-jira.bin scripts in the <jira_install>/bin directory. 

4. Log in to Jira with the username recovery_admin and the temporary password you specified in the system property. 

5. Reset the password for your existing admin account, or create a new account and add it to the appropriate administrator group. 

6. Confirm that you can successfully log in with your new account.

7. Stop your Jira nodes. 

8. Remove the -Datlassian.recovery.password parameter from each available node

9. Start your Jira nodes again normally.

I hope this helps but if you have any other questions just ask away 😃

All the best,

Laura

[Gabriel Meyer]

I'll try that next time.  I ended up just wiping the db and doing an import of the XML db again.  It just seems that I can login fine with admin the first day or two after an import and then all of a sudden it wants a captcha and refuses to let me login. 

Regards,

Gabriel

[Joshua Sneed Contegix · Accepted solution]

Hi Gabriel,

You probably need to recover the admin user. I would also recommend not using the admin user created when restoring a cloud export to server and recommend that you create a unique admin user that does not use "admin" in its name. Cheers!

[Gabriel Meyer]

I will accept these answers for now.  I wiped out the database and recreated it from scratch.  I'm just not sure why, after a certain period of days, I can no longer login to the JIRA system after importing the XML data.

[Joshua Sneed Contegix]

Hi Gabriel,
It's because you are using a temporary account as the admin account. Restore you export, use the admin account to log in, create a true system administrator account, and stop using the admin account created solely for the restore. Cheers!

[Gabriel Meyer]

Alright.  Will check on that.  Is there a reason that JIRA stops allowing me to login as admin on the restored system versus the initial system?  I can login as admin 100% of the time on the old system, no problems.  I just want to understand the reasoning behind it.

[Joshua Sneed Contegix]

Yes, there is a reason. I don't know what it is because I do not have access to the system for investigation. Stop using the default admin account after restore, other than setting up your actual admin account. Cheers!