Recovery of an Admin Password

Introduction

Not infrequently, account credentials of an Openfire server that was set up a long time ago get lost in time. This prevents access to the Admin Console of Openfire, which hampers administration of the instance. This short guide explains how to configure Openfire to accept a password that can be used exactly once to log into the Admin Console, allowing you to configure a new administrative user, or reset the password for an existing administrator.

One-Time Access Token Configuration

One of the most asked questions on this community forum is how to reset the Openfire admin password such that you can gain access to the web based administration console. Prior to release version 4.3.1, you had to go through the server setup process again to reset the admin password. This process was somewhat scary as people typically don't trust that rerunning setup would not break your configuration settings.

There is now a simpler way with Openfire version 4.3.1 and higher. The steps are as follows.

1. Stop Openfire
2. Locate Openfire's conf/openfire.xml and edit it with your favorite text editor.
3. Add a tag within the root <jive> tag like so: <oneTimeAccessToken>secretToken</oneTimeAccessToken>, where secretToken is whatever you want:
   Example of configuration in openfire.xml

   <jive>
       <oneTimeAccessToken>secretToken</oneTimeAccessToken>
       <adminConsole>
           <!-- Disable either port by setting the value to -1 -->
           <port>9090</port>

4. Start Openfire
5. For best results, use an incognito/private browsing web browser session to view the Openfire admin console http://localhost:9090 or https://localhost:9091 (You can replace 'localhost' with a network name or IP address, but by default, Openfire's Admin Console is accesible only from the server itself).

   

6. Enter the one time token from step 3 into the webpage.
7. Use the admin console to do what you need to do, which may include navigating to the admin user and updating its password.

Once you have used this oneTimeAccessToken to access the admin console, it is removed from the openfire.xml configuration file.