If you lose your LimeSurvey admin password, you can’t easily change it in the database because it’s hashed in sha256 + saved as blob.
A possibility (which I didn’t test) would be to create a tiny PHP page that outputs just the hash of your wanted new pass, save this as a text file and upload it in phpMyAdmin.
Another possibility is to follow the LimeSurvey wiki, which says to restore the install folder and run a password reset script (btw, this explains a lot why you need to delete/move the install folder after the installation process…).
My personal favorite, because I think it’s the fastest, is:
- edit the file admin/usercontrol.php as follow:
findif (SHA256::hash($_POST['password']) == $fields['password'])(in LimeSurvey 1.72 it’s on line 115)
replace it withif(true) - now log in using your proper admin login and any password
- go to user management and edit your password (don’t worry, it won’t ask you to enter your old password)
- edit admin/usercontrol.php back to normal, i.e. replace:
if(true)
with
if (SHA256::hash($_POST['password']) == $fields['password'])
Now you’re done 🙂
It should be noted that with this method, anyone can log in to any account provided that they know the name of this account. So if your admin account is easy to guess (random example: if you let the default name “admin”), the method is a bit risky, particularly if you’re slow. In this case, putting an .htaccess file like the following one in the admin folder would be more reasonable:
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from [put your IP here]
Or you can go to
http://docs.limesurvey.org/tiki-index.php?page=General+FAQ#5_I_forgot_my_admin_password_How_do_I_reset_it_
and use the instructions there (without the need to edit the source code).
If you’d read the article entirely, you’d have noticed this link is already mentioned… ;p
PS: sorry for the late approval, for some reason WP notifies me only every few weeks of posts waiting in mod queue :/
Thanks! Very helpful. I used your “personal favorite” and it worked perfectly!
Thanks very much 🙂 your suggestion really helped…
Thanks for this.
I tried what the docs are saying and it didn’t work, used the code editing and it worked great, I’m not even a developer, I’m a marketer and that sort of thing is rocket science to me, Thanks
Thanks for the perfect solution.
works perfectly! Thanks a lot!
Thanks a lot .It worked for me too.
Of course it does 😉
didn’t work for me…
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘{‘ in /data02/c9699337/public_html/admin/usercontrol.php on line 154
every time i correct the error it pops up with another
Hm, maybe they changed stuff in LimeSurvey 2, as far as I understood that was a complete rewrite. However, if you substitute strictly what I put there, it shouldn’t break anything: this replaces a valid syntax with another valid syntax that perfectly fits in. Anyway to fix the error I suppose you can just get a new usercontrol.php from the installation package.