Suddenly can no longer administer my blog.

[accampbell]

I can still read my blog but when I try to administer it I get a message saying that the username or password are wrong. I can still reach the database on the server using the same password and username. I hadn't changed anything; it just stopped working after many months.

I thought that serendipity_config_local.inc.php might have got corrupted so I deleted it and went through the installation process again. Everything seemed to go smoothly and I can see the blog but still I can't administer it.

Could the permissions on serendipity_config_local.inc.php be wrong? At present they are -rwx.

[accampbell]

I forgot to add an odd feature of this: when I first tried to access the admin page, using the remembered info in the browser, it connected. But thereafter, with retyping the password, it no longer connected.

Ive tried this on 3 different computers now, with the same result.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

This is not related to your database access. The password you use for serendipity itself is another one. It is stored in the serendipity_authors DB table, not in the config_local.inc.php file.

By re-executing the installation you might now have some duplicate author rows. Try to login with the username you used for the new installation (John Doe, PW "john" is default).

You also might want to delete your browser's cookies to properly relogin?

Regards,
Garvin

[accampbell]

Thanks for the prompt reply, Garvin. I tried the steps you suggest, but no luck. I can see the author's row on the database and there is an encrypted password there, but I'm reluctant to meddle with it because I'm not sure how to reconstitute it - in particular I can't see how to encrypt it. There doesn't seem to be a button for that.

My provider has a means to change the database password but from what you say that is not for Serendipity.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

If you use phpMyAdmin, you can edit that row and change the dropdown on the left of it to use "MD5" (in that dropdown you should also see things like UPPERCASE, ENCRYPT etc. Those are mysql functions. The passwords are md5 encrypted, and if you choose this option in the dropdown you can enter the cleartext password you want for that user, and save the row in phpmyadmin.

HTH,
Garvin

[accampbell]

There don't seem to be any of those things. There is just an ".Edit" button which brings up a panel which allows you to edit the line but no drop-downs that I can see.

I saw someone else on the list had just deleted the password to get passwordless access. Is that a possibility?

[accampbell]

Sorry - ignore last post. I finally found it and changed the password and it works! Thanks very much - you came up trumps as usual.

I don't know why it went wrong in the first place but anyway it's working now.