A common mistake, performed by both new and seasoned users, is locking oneself out of the frontend. This can happen in several ways, but we're more interested here in how to get back in:
- Q: I forgot my password and tried to log in until the Zabbix frontend stopped responding.
A: By default, Zabbix denies access for 30 seconds after 5 failed login attempts, so just wait for 30 seconds. You can customize these values in includes/defines.inc.php:
-
- ZBX_LOGIN_ATTEMPTS: The number of unsuccessful attempts after which Zabbix denies access
- ZBX_LOGIN_BLOCK: How long to deny access for, in seconds
- Q: I have forgotten my Admin user password, or I have been tasked with managing a Zabbix installation where the Admin user's password is not known.
A: You can easily reset the Admin user password by directly modifying the database:
mysql> update zabbix.users set passwd=MD5('somepassword') where alias='Admin';
Of course, replace somepassword with some other string. Keep in mind that, by default, MySQL saves console commands in the ~/.mysql_history file, so you might want to set the password to some temporary version and update it in the frontend later.
- Q: I changed the authentication method, but it didn't work as planned and now I can't log in anymore.
A: You can restore Zabbix's internal authentication method by editing the database:
mysql> update zabbix.config set authentication_type='0' where configid='1';
Authentication type 0 is the internal one. For the record, other types are 1 (LDAP) and 2 (HTTP). Zabbix expects only one config table entry with a configid value of 1.