restoring-an-admin.md

Restoring an Admin User

You may lose access to a vital admin user (or the only Admin on the server) and need to restore it without using another admin user. To restore an admin, you will need to access the database.

Access the Database

You can access the database in various ways, depending on how you installed Rocket.Chat server.

Docker-based installations

To open the mongo shell within the mongo container,

• Change into the docker-compose directory (where your docker-compose.yml is located) and run mongo bash.

cd /opt/docker/Rocket.Chat
docker-compose run mongo bash

Alternatively, you can run the following command without navigating to thedocker-compose.yml directory.

docker exec -it -u root mongo-image /bin/bash

• Login into the mongo shell.

mongo

{% hint style="info" %} Make sure to replace mongo with the name of your MongoDB container if you use a different one. {% endhint %}

• Open the database in the mongo shell

use rocketchat

{% hint style="info" %} Make sure to replace rocketchat with the name of your Mongo database. If you're unsure of the name, you can either check your docker-compose.yml file or run the following command: {% endhint %}

show dbs

Ubuntu Snaps Installation

• Connect to MongoDB using the following command:

sudo rocketchat-server.mongo

• Select the Rocket.Chat Database:

use parties

Updating the Admin Password

To update the admin password, you can either use a one-time access token or update the admin password to a random string.

• Using an access token will require the user to change his password.

db.getCollection('users').update({username:"administrator"}, {$set: { "services":{"loginToken":{"token":"some-token-id-that-you-will-use-to-login-once"}}, "requirePasswordChange":true} })

Then access http://{your server url}/login-token/some-token-id-that-you-will-use-to-login-once to log in.

• Alternatively, you can update the admin password to a random string. Using 12345 as an example of the password, use its hashed(bycrypt) value:

db.getCollection('users').update({username:"administrator"}, { $set: {"services" : { "password" : {"bcrypt" : "$2a$10$n9CM8OgInDlwpvjLKLPML.eizXIzLlRtgCh3GRLafOdR9ldAUh/KG" } } } })

{% hint style="warning" %} Replace administrator with the appropriate username of the administrator on your server. {% endhint %}

• Restart your application container in case the new password is not accepted yet.

Generate a Valid Admin Password

To generate a valid password and its hashed value with bcrypt-cli,

• Install **** bcrypt-cli **** with:

// npm install -g @carsondarling/bcrypt-cli

• Then, use this to generate your bcrypt password:

// npm install -g @carsondarling/bcrypt-cli bcrypt $(echo -n "yourPasswordHere" | sha256sum | cut -d " " -f 1) && echo

Reset a User role to Admin

To reset a user role to admin, run the following database command :

db.users.update({username: "administrator"}, { $push: { roles: "admin"}})

{% hint style="warning" %} Replace administrator with the appropriate username of the administrator on your server. {% endhint %}