Reset a user's password

DETAILS: Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate Offering: Self-managed

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

Prerequisites

To reset a user password, you must be an administrator of a self-managed GitLab instance.

The user's new password must meet all password requirements.

Use the UI

To reset a user's password in the UI:

On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin Area.
Select Overview > Users.
For the user whose password you want to update, select Edit.
In the Password area, type a password and password confirmation.
Select Save changes.

A confirmation is displayed.

Use a Rake task

Introduced in GitLab 13.9.

Use the following Rake task to reset a user's password.

::Tabs

:::TabTitle Linux package (Omnibus)

sudo gitlab-rake "gitlab:password:reset"

:::TabTitle Self-compiled (source)

bundle exec rake "gitlab:password:reset"

::EndTabs

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

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

::Tabs

:::TabTitle Linux package (Omnibus)

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

:::TabTitle Self-compiled (source)

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

::EndTabs

Use a Rails console

If you know the username, user ID, or email address, you can use the Rails console to reset their password:

Open a Rails console.

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')

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

Optional. Notify the user that an administrator changed their password:
```
user.send_only_admin_changed_your_password_notification!
```
Save the changes:
```
user.save!
```
Exit the console:
```
exit
```

Reset the root password

To reset the root password, follow the steps listed 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's 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:

Start a Rails console.

Find the user and skip reconfirmation:

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

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

You might not be able to reset a user's expired password due to the Password Expired error on Git Fetch via SSH for LDAP users.