Resetting a lost admin passwordΒΆ

The normal ways to recover a lost password are:

  1. Click the password reset link on the login screen; this appears after a failed login attempt. This works only if you have entered your email address on your Personal page in the Nextcloud Web interface, so that the Nextcloud server can email a reset link to you.
  2. Ask another Nextcloud server admin to reset it for you.

If neither of these is an option, then you have a third option, and that is using the occ command. occ is in the nextcloud directory, for example /var/www/nextcloud/occ. occ has a command for resetting all user passwords, user:resetpassword. It is best to run occ as the HTTP user, as in this example on Ubuntu Linux:

$ sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/occ user:resetpassword admin
Enter a new password:
Confirm the new password:
Successfully reset password for admin

If your Nextcloud username is not admin, then substitute your Nextcloud username.

You can find your HTTP user in your HTTP configuration file. These are the default Apache HTTP user:group on Linux distros:

  • Centos, Red Hat, Fedora: apache:apache
  • Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint: www-data:www-data
  • openSUSE: wwwrun:www

See Using the occ command to learn more about using the occ command.