Logged in to GUI, and now I can't log in at all?

[styr]

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!

 

[styr]

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)

In light of that more recent post, I should probably also add the other relevant details that I have disabled passwordless login via the console.

Q5: I also have a configuration backup file from about 6 months ago (I'm pretty sure the settings have not changed since then), but would that not also require root access to restore/deploy?

TIA again!

 

[Ericloewe]

Unable to login in the GUI after update to FreeNAS-Corral-10.0.3 (3 years ago)

That most certainly was not three years ago and it's going to be essentially irrelevant, since Corral is a very different codebase.

Q2: As another practical matter, how can I reboot safely when I can't get root access? Send a reboot signal with IPMI?

No, issue an ACPI shutdown command. In other words, press the power button (physically or virtually, using IPMI).

Also, should I be concerned about my data?

No.

As for your specific problem: Reset the password in the local console (via IPMI) to a temporary, foolproof thing like 123456, then log in and change it to something safe. This time, avoid fancy characters like ", @, (space), etc. Alphanumeric + dashes and underscores.

 

[styr]

Thanks so much for the reply.

That most certainly was not three years ago

Wow, sorry about that! I totally grabbed the wrong dates from those threads, only looking at the join dates of the original posters. These are both relatively recent for my install, but as you say, likely irrelevant. Also looks like I had a fat finger on the ten-key, with 9.40 instead of 9.10.

Oddly enough, my IPMI does not seem to be accessible right now, but I tried the local console, and it's a no go. It requires a password to log in. Interestingly, I can see in the scroll-back buffer where I logged in as root, created my non-root user account, and logged out, but now I am unable to log back in, despite no (apparent) action on my part to change the root password.

If I do reboot at some point and can't set up the server again, I suppose I can try reinstalling FreeNAS and then restoring the configuration from backup. For now, I'd like to keep the NAS up and running, as it (sufficiently) just works.

If I did want to move the drives to another (FreeBSD) machine with ZFS, could I just GELI attach (decrypt) and ZFS import?

Thanks

 

[danb35]

I can see in the scroll-back buffer where I logged in as root, created my non-root user account, and logged out,

So you created the user account at the shell, not through the GUI? That could have something to do with your problem.

 

[styr]

So you created the user account at the shell, not through the GUI? That could have something to do with your problem.

I had not thought of that, as it has never caused such problems in the past. I would create user accounts through the GUI if it would let me. Instead, it just fails for no apparent reason. Maybe a version upgrade would have fixed that.

I am still just curious as to why the root password would just spontaneously reset when I barely do anything administrative on this box, as seems to have happened also for other users in the past 8 months on older and newer versions of FreeNAS. It may be a while before I figure out what's actually going on under the hood at this point, because I am now reluctant to reboot in case there are other hassles awaiting.