Locked Out of Admin GUI¶
Symptom: can't log into the UnifiedBX web admin. Credentials rejected, account doesn't exist, or all admins were deleted.
Most Likely Causes¶
- Forgot password — straightforward.
- Deleted the only Full-access admin — locked yourself out structurally.
- GUI itself is broken — Apache down, PHP error, db connection lost.
- Fail2ban banned your IP after too many failed attempts.
Diagnose¶
# Are services up?
systemctl status httpd mariadb asterisk
# Try the login page:
curl -I https://<unifiedbx-fqdn>/admin/
# Are you banned?
fail2ban-client status freepbx-pbx
# Or check iptables:
iptables -L -n | grep <your-ip>
Fix¶
Forgot password (still have console / SSH access)¶
fwconsole userman setPassword <username> <new-password>
Deleted the only admin¶
fwconsole userman addUser admin newPass admin@example.com
fwconsole userman setPermissions admin all
Fail2ban ban¶
# Find your jail:
fail2ban-client status
# Unban:
fail2ban-client set <jail-name> unbanip <your-ip>
# Whitelist your IP permanently:
fail2ban-client set <jail-name> addignoreip <your-ip>
Or via UnifiedBX: System Admin → Sysadmin → Intrusion Detection → Whitelist.
Apache or DB down¶
systemctl restart httpd
systemctl restart mariadb
If they don't start, check their logs (/var/log/httpd/error_log, /var/log/mariadb/).
Total recovery (GUI broken AND CLI broken)¶
Boot in single-user mode, mount the disk, edit the admin user directly in the freepbxsettings MySQL DB. This is rare and painful — almost always one of the above gets you back in first.
When to Escalate¶
fwconsole userman returns errors about missing tables — the userman DB itself is corrupt. Restore from backup. See Restore a Backup.