Reset password error issue for admin user in Volto

Plone Support
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Hey everyone! Recently, i was trying to solve volto issue, the issue needed to access the forgot password page. When i enter the username “admin“, it shows a server error “internal server error“ and when i try to enter different username it shows “not found” i think i have to set up email config so that i can get access to the change password page and get a token, but i tried that also, but nothing happened. Same issue. Feel free to tell me if i am doing something wrong. I am new here. Thanks in advance.

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@suhaibfida The default admin user is a special case in Plone Volto (actually in Zope).

I refinded the title of your topic question to focus on this (as Moderator).

The admin password can only be changed in the ZMI

(the ZMI is the deep backend in the Plone backend processes, not in Volto).

This deep admin user works as login to Plone Volto, but is not managed inside Volto and not intended to work in Plone as an Admin or Site Admin.

The forgot password page is part of the management of users created and managed in the Volto controlpanels.
If you use different external auth methods this applies as well:

Zope Level admin users cannot be managed from Volto and this is by intention and good!

If you cannot login into your Plone Volto system anymore as admin, you may cannot create other users as well.

A way to regain access: The Emergency User

If you are locked out (not logged!), there is a way to regain access if you have access to the server. The procedure to create a so called Emergency User uses the adduser command and wrapped into a script addzopeuser.

It is sufficient for local development or bare metal installs.

Special hints for cookieplone generated Docker swarm setups

If you are running a docker swarm deployment similar to setups created by recent cookieplone templates (since 2024), you may need the skills to execute addzopeuser inside of one backend container and use the relstorage.conf config.

TL;DR;

Example to add a new user from the server root (logged in via ssh), based on a cookieplone devops default setup.

ssh root@myserver.example.com

# enter a backend container (oneliner)
docker exec `docker ps -it `-qf 'name=_backend'|head -n1` bash

# add an additional management user
./docker-entrypoint.sh ./bin/addzopeuser -c ./etc/relstorage.conf admin2 "paßword"

If you have a different setup
If the user exists, a warning is displayed and nothing is changed. You cannot change passwords this way!

Enter the ZMI at root level to change the admin default password

  1. You can now login into Plone using this admin2 user

  2. Enter the ZMI root from localhost:

    • local install reachable at: http://localhost:8080/
    • login into the backend using the admin2 user maybe via http basic auth
    • go to http://localhost:8080/acl_users/users/manage_users
    • click on the user and change password
      • avoid using special characters for a quick test
    • You can add more admin(x) users from here to play around and kick them later, but keep one working!

  3. or Enter the ZMI from the Classic UI on a remote server only exposing its Volto Frontend

    • login into the backend using the admin2 user maybe via http basic auth
    • https://myserver.example.com)/ClassicUI/aq_parent/acl_users/users/manage_users

Pitfall: If you or someone else has used an older setup with a http basic auth on the Traefik level of the swarm, this takes precedence over the Zope level. Then at entering the ZMI you max need this password and you cannot reach the ZMI root. Fixing this is beyond the scope of these tipps.

Further readings

You can now also search for the mentionend terms addzopeuser, emergency user in this forum.

I have created a pull request to older Training docs targeting this at Troubleshoot deployment issues – Plone deployment — Plone Training 2025 documentation but it is still stuck in draft:

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Thanks a bunch.

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Can you please describe if you could fix your problem and leave a forum reaction?

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What was the issue?

I was setting up the Volto repository locally so I could start contributing. While browsing issues, I found this one:

https://github.com/plone/volto/issues/7533 created by @mamico.

To reproduce the issue, I needed to log out of the admin account and access /resetpassword. That required a working email configuration. I was using the official Plone backend Docker image:

https://6.docs.plone.org/install/containers/images/backend.html

I configured email delivery using MailHog in a Docker Compose setup. However, the password reset still wasn’t working. I later found out the reason:

Volto cannot reset the default admin user’s password.

I learned this after asking for help on the Plone community forum:

Topic: https://community.plone.org/t/reset-password-error-issue-for-admin-user-in-volto/22577

Key Learnings

  • The default admin user’s password cannot be reset via Volto.

  • Admin password changes must be done through ZMI (the backend interface).

  • If locked out, create an emergency Zope user on the server and fix the password via ZMI.

Thanks to the Plone team, especially @acsr, for the guidance.

Outcome

After understanding the root cause, I created a new user and solved the issue. I submitted a pull request.

PR: https://github.com/plone/volto/pull/7547

I’m very new to open-source, but this experience taught me a lot—from reproducing issues to asking the community for help and finally contributing a fix.

Thanks again to the entire Plone community!

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Thank you for the engaging reply. Many happy returns of this experience!

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