Older versions

If the above didn't work (try it first, it won't do anything if it's not supported), you might be using an old version of Zope.

You can create an "emergency user" that will let you into the system. To do this, you'll need the ability to create files in your $INSTANCE_HOME, and to restart Plone.

If this is the case, you can create a temporary user to reset your password with if you have filesystem access to the server your Plone is running on. Here's how:

1. Go to your Zope's INSTANCE_HOME directory. This is the same directory as the one where your 'Products' directory is located in. On Windows, this is c:\Program Files\Plone 2\Data\.

2. Run the zpasswd.py file with an argument of access.

   This is located in Zope's bin directory. Remember that you need to qualify the path to your Python if it's not in your path. A typical example from Windows with full paths shown would look like this:

   C:\Program Files\Plone 2\Data> ..\Python\python.exe ..\Zope\bin\zpasswd.py access
   Username: tempuser 
   Password: 
   Verify password: 
   
   Please choose a format from: 
   
   SHA - SHA-1 hashed password (default) 
   CRYPT - UNIX-style crypt password 
   CLEARTEXT - no protection 
   
   Encoding: SHA 
   Domain restrictions: 
   

   The approach on a typical Linux/UNIX or Mac OS X operating system would look like this:

   $ python [your zope]/bin/zpasswd.py access
   

   If you can't run zpasswd.py, you can also create the access file by hand. The simplest format is just a single line, in the format "username:password". In our example, that would be:

   tempuser:mypassword
   

3. Restart your Zope, you should now have an account 'tempuser' that can log in and create a proper user for you inside the instance or reset your existing password. Please note that this temporary manager user cannot create content or do most actions -- they exist just for you to create a normal Manager user in the Zope acl_users folder.

4. Remember to delete the 'access' file you created after you're done -- leaving it around after you have fixed things is not a good idea, and might be a potential security risk, should someone come along and read this file.