Hopefully this post isn't too long or complicated. I am numbering my questions, so that responses can be easily parsed.
As a brief way of introduction, I have seen similar problems in a couple of other threads, but no real solutions or explanations, maybe only workarounds:
Web GUI Login Problem (FreeNAS 9.40.1-U2) (1 year ago)
Unable to login in the GUI after update to FreeNAS-Corral-10.0.3 (3 years ago)
Q0: These are fairly old threads, but I have never seen this problem. Is this a known issue in FreeNAS?
I am running FreeNAS 9.10.1-U4. I have basically not changed anything since installing 8 months ago. The root password has been the same all along, which I keep in a password manager. It is a randomly generated alphanumeric string (lower, upper, digits) that could easily be entered on a standard keyboard, say, on a command line.
I rebooted the machine about 4 months ago, and I must have logged in to the GUI to mount the encrypted volumes and create my non-root user account. Now, I paste in the password, and the GUI tells me the password is wrong. Yet, I even check old backup copies of my password databases, and the password is still the same as it has been. It's also not just the GUI; I can't ssh or su, either. I can log in with a non-root user account via ssh, and all my files are there just fine.
Q1: The other threads with similar problems ended up rebooting, and then the old password login works. What would cause that, and why?
Q2: As another practical matter, how can I reboot safely when I can't get root access? Send a reboot signal with IPMI?
Q3: Also, should I be concerned about my data? In other words, I assume that if I cannot get root access back, then I can just reinstall FreeNAS (maybe a newer version) and reimport my data, right?
Q4: I had originally used this FreeNAS install to make one RAIDZ pool with GELI, and the key is backed up, so if I wanted to import this on another machine supporting ZFS, would that be fairly straightforward?
TIA!
As a brief way of introduction, I have seen similar problems in a couple of other threads, but no real solutions or explanations, maybe only workarounds:
Web GUI Login Problem (FreeNAS 9.40.1-U2) (1 year ago)
Unable to login in the GUI after update to FreeNAS-Corral-10.0.3 (3 years ago)
Q0: These are fairly old threads, but I have never seen this problem. Is this a known issue in FreeNAS?
I am running FreeNAS 9.10.1-U4. I have basically not changed anything since installing 8 months ago. The root password has been the same all along, which I keep in a password manager. It is a randomly generated alphanumeric string (lower, upper, digits) that could easily be entered on a standard keyboard, say, on a command line.
I rebooted the machine about 4 months ago, and I must have logged in to the GUI to mount the encrypted volumes and create my non-root user account. Now, I paste in the password, and the GUI tells me the password is wrong. Yet, I even check old backup copies of my password databases, and the password is still the same as it has been. It's also not just the GUI; I can't ssh or su, either. I can log in with a non-root user account via ssh, and all my files are there just fine.
Q1: The other threads with similar problems ended up rebooting, and then the old password login works. What would cause that, and why?
Q2: As another practical matter, how can I reboot safely when I can't get root access? Send a reboot signal with IPMI?
Q3: Also, should I be concerned about my data? In other words, I assume that if I cannot get root access back, then I can just reinstall FreeNAS (maybe a newer version) and reimport my data, right?
Q4: I had originally used this FreeNAS install to make one RAIDZ pool with GELI, and the key is backed up, so if I wanted to import this on another machine supporting ZFS, would that be fairly straightforward?
TIA!