Reset user passwords

You can reset user passwords by using the UI, a Rake task, a Rails console, or the Users API.

Prerequisites

• You must be an administrator of GitLab Self-Managed.
• The new password must meet all password requirements.

Use the UI

To reset a user password in the UI:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin.
2. Select Overview > Users.
3. Identify a user account to update, select Edit.
4. In the Password section, enter and confirm a new password.
5. Select Save changes.

A confirmation is displayed.

Use a Rake task

To reset a user password with a Rake task:

sudo gitlab-rake "gitlab:password:reset"

bundle exec rake "gitlab:password:reset"

GitLab requests a username, a password, and confirmation of the password. When complete, the user password is updated.

The Rake task can accept a username as an argument. For example, to reset the password for the user with username sidneyjones:

sudo gitlab-rake "gitlab:password:reset[sidneyjones]"

bundle exec rake "gitlab:password:reset[sidneyjones]"

Use a Rails console

To reset a user password from a Rails console:

Prerequisites:

• You must know the associated username, user ID, or email address.

1. Open a Rails console.

2. Find the user:

   • By username:

     user = User.find_by_username 'exampleuser'

   • By user ID:

     user = User.find(123)

   • By email address:

     user = User.find_by(email: 'user@example.com')

3. Reset the password by setting a value for user.password and user.password_confirmation. For example, to set a new random password:

   new_password = ::User.random_password
   user.password = new_password
   user.password_confirmation = new_password
   user.password_automatically_set = false

   To set a specific value for the new password:

   new_password = 'examplepassword'
   user.password = new_password
   user.password_confirmation = new_password
   user.password_automatically_set = false

4. Optional. Notify the user that an administrator changed their password:

   user.send_only_admin_changed_your_password_notification!

5. Save the changes:

   user.save!

6. Exit the console:

   exit

Reset the root password

You can reset the root password through the Rake task or Rails console processes outlined previously.

• If the root account name hasn’t changed, use the username root.
• If the root account name has changed and you don’t know the new username, you might be able to use a Rails console with user ID 1. In almost all cases, the first user is the default administrator account.

Troubleshooting

Use the following information to troubleshoot issues when resetting a user password.

Email confirmation issues

If the new password doesn’t work, it might be an email confirmation issue. You can attempt to fix this issue in a Rails console. For example, if a new root password isn’t working:

1. Start a Rails console.

2. Find the user and skip reconfirmation:

   user = User.find(1)
   user.skip_reconfirmation!

3. Attempt to sign in again.

Unmet password requirements

The password might be too short, too weak, or not meet complexity requirements. Ensure the password you are attempting to set meets all password requirements.

Expired password

If a user password has previously expired, you might need to update the password expiration date. For more information, see Password expired error on Git fetch with SSH for LDAP user.